Starting to live with a diagnosis - or bad news of any kind - that is not expected and that results in a dramatic change in your lifestyle is not easy, and the first few years for me were very difficult. However, life is not a straight line, it is a line full of high and low points, the latter I call growth challenges.
Possibly our concept of life as we grow is defined as a life without problems, a life that only brings good news, however only in a utopian scenario would this happen. For me a good life is one that brings conflicts, problems, wrong and right people, moments of sadness and joy. It is here and in these scenarios that we grow and learn.
The first challenge I faced when I received the news that my life would not be the same, was that same: Seeing life with different eyes. The new eyes left me confronted with a disease about which even the doctors did not have much information, and in that sense the fear took hold of me at the moment when they themselves told me that I would have to find a way to live with it for a long time. That long time is already more than 10 years, however I learned that there is a big difference between living with a disease and living with a diagnosis.
The downward curve that seemed to have no end
The first steps are always challenging, in whatever scenario it is: a new school, a new friendship, the first job, the first days of marriage, etc. Facing an illness with which one would have to live was no different.
In my case it was learning to walk again, as babies do, from crawling, to walking with support to letting go. Learn to walk, at 16. Those first steps I took with a feeling of helplessness and thinking about everything I would have to leave behind. And although I started hoping to walk alone and even run again, I felt that my life would be tied to short distances, and running -despite the therapies every week- looked like a distant dream.
The curve seemed to have no end. It seemed that I could not exercise again, but it was when I saw this that I learned something that I practice to this day: you can complain about your 'misfortune', or try to get out of it. Today I write this blog because I decided to follow the second.
The upward curve
When I saw myself in that hole, that abyss that seemed not to end, I decided to enter the gym. To lift weights and to have an enviable body, but first of all, not to let myself be overcome by a diagnosis.
Again, first steps. The beginning was difficult, I needed a lot of help and I didn't do much, or lift a lot of weight, this if I wanted to go home on my own. However these first steps meant strengthening my muscles even more, those that every day deteriorated so quickly and that today thanks to deciding to take those first steps are as much or stronger than those of a person who does not have MS.
After going to the gym for many years you realize that life is reflected in each of the exercises you perform: life is about lifting the weight you have on top to grow and strengthen yourself.
Without the first curve, the second would not have been possible, it is necessary to face challenges and difficulties in life because these make you stronger and wiser, hence the importance of a life of curves and even more important to understand that there are no endless descending curves. Life is like a roller coaster, without the curves it would be a train ride and I would lose all the excitement.
The first steps in the downward curves are always the most complicated, especially because those curves we do not like and we do not expect them, however they are necessary to start a path, and although moving forward is not always easy and can be disconcerting, that step takes you from where you are to the place you want to be and this is what should move you to take that step.
Life is like this, it is not a straight line, it is a line full of downward and upward curves, there is not one without the other because you need the error to learn and you need the stumble to get up more strongly.
If this content has added value to you, help me bring it to more people. Share and comment.
Comments