Present in the Present

Today marks seven months since I've been off my opiates, and I was inspired to reflect on my journey since returning to the living. For so long, life was just a numb haze through which I struggled to see. Every day off my prescription narcotics, I see life more acutely.  It's as though I've gone from living in the oldest black and white movie with the worst special effects to an IMAX film that shocks me with its brilliance and wonder each and every day.  There is no more numbness to dull emotions or perspectives, and my body and mind feel healthier than they have in nineteen years.  I'm redefining relationships, establishing boundaries and discovering a wealth of worth I never knew existed. It has been a beautiful, while sometimes challenging, journey since January.

Being chronically ill for any extended period of time can rob you of your identity and sense of self-worth.  I went to college and received a B.A. in Spanish, and I had established a promising career as a translator.  However, pain and illness don't mix well with a career, and I eventually lost the battle of maintaining employment to extended hospitalizations and disease.  All I had worked hard to establish seemed to be lost to something completely out of my control, and I felt like a failure.  I thought I was a disappointment to my family, a loser to my social circle and a shell of my former self.  I will say that the drugs helped to numb these feelings of inadequacy over the years, but I was able to define them in therapy once the pharmaceuticals were removed.  An observation for the masses: therapy is not for the weak, but for the strong who want to overcome weaknesses.

I never realized how worthless I felt until I entered trauma therapy for the loss of my son this past February, and I confronted the Jessica that used to be in the face of the Jessica that is evolving everyday. I've cried for that sick girl, not out of pity, but out of loss for what could have been. The beauty of life is that each day is a new opportunity to begin again, and that is what I have done. I have begun again. I have been reborn in a new life that I am learning to define, not allowing my illness or suffering therein to define for me.  It's been the most empowering journey of my life, and I meet each day with new hopes for what can be as I continue to explore healing.

I am not a victim of anything that has happened to me; I am a survivor despite it all. And THAT Jessica is who I choose to celebrate, not pity the Jessica that was. I cannot change the times I drooled and had eyes that rolled back in my head from opiate intoxication, that I tripped over my oxygen tubing or gasped for breath, that I bent over in pain.  Those times happened, and I survived them. It's that survival that now makes me proud and gives me a sense of worth.  I AM worthy of love, respect, and pride, and it's the Jessica that's aware of those things that I celebrate today.

I'm not better than anyone else. Far from it.  The most important theme in this new and evolving life is that I'm AS GOOD as everyone else.  It's that perspective that gives me the courage to keep reaching for new heights, achieving new goals and setting new boundaries that empower me.  The truth is that everyone has struggled with something.  We all have the capacity to overcome if we find and hold onto the love for ourselves in the face of any adversity.  Life is glorious, every beautiful and heartbreaking moment.  It is not a linear journey, but more of a web we have the power to weave. And if we allow ourselves the power to see it, the silk we spin is full of splendor.