Recovery

It’s been over a year and a half since my last posting. Back when I combed the Internet for fellow sickies’ thoughts, I’d come across archeological remains of blogs that the author seemed to have abandoned mid-thought, and I’d always wonder what had happened. Did the writer get so sick and dispirited that she faded away from everything? Or did she get wildly healthy, and never want to revisit her sick days again? I’d imagine that most people who heal from ME/CFS naturally drift away from the Internet haunts that sick people use, and so voices of those successfully recovering are vastly underrepresented. According to Blogger Stats, at least a few people still wander into my blog every day, and I don’t want to be a mystery. I’m the second type; over the past year and a half, I’ve recovered a great deal of my health. 

I want to write an entry to counterbalance all the sad stories in the small world of the ME/CFS Internet community, even if I can’t fully explain how I’ve gotten better. An old friend came into my life, through this blog in fact, who had been severely ill (Lyme and complications, ME) since he was 12, and had slowly put himself back together over a few years of uncompromising hard work. He showed me how much energy I had been wasting, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and how to begin taking responsibility for it. Through example, love, and some good-hearted yelling, he showed me a number of alternatives, and also introduced some practices into my life (martial arts, exercise, sex, communication, even some kinds of video games) that have proven invaluable to getting into a life- and growth-oriented stream of things. 

A hike last winter in Vancouver, BC

I still have to be extremely careful with myself, and work hard every day to not fall back into old patterns that lead to illness. Most of my life is structured around recovery, and I suspect it always will be. Still, I can exercise for an hour almost every day, I went to school last semester and am preparing now for a job teaching English as a second language, I take walks, climb trees, cook, see friends, play Dance Dance Revolution, run errands, and other such miraculous things that I thought would never be part of my life again.  I weigh 25 more pounds than I used to, and I’m off all the many medications I used to take for insomnia, inflammation, depression, and anxiety. 

If this seems maddeningly vague, I understand; I haven’t really been able to articulate the details of how I got better even to my closest friends and family. I understand more than I can explain, and I don’t understand it all. Nevertheless, it happened, and if nothing else it proves that recovery is possible.