Come dance with me!

It’s been a remarkable couple of weeks. There are lots of little details which not even I find all that fascinating. And then there are the details which are downright freaky and coincidental and make one wonder how the universe really works.

The gist of the freakiness is that a bunch of seemingly unrelated stuff converged all at once to help me realize that over the past seven years, my spirit has slowly been squashed by being on a pretty restrictive version of disability. It was a rather stunning, world-rocking admission that despite my happy facing, I had really been rather sad and angry and frustrated. For quite a while. My world seemed full of can’ts and don’ts and shouldn’ts and don’t even try its because of my back and a disability program full of contradictory rules. I tried to see the silver linings, tried to see the rainbows, tried to focus on the blessings. And that mostly worked. But damn if it isn’t true that stuff that you don’t really deal with doesn’t ever truly go away. So suddenly a few weeks ago it all seemed to bubble up to the surface, without much warning.

And then, just as I was exhausted and overwhelmed by my truth, 24 hours later, I was set free. A letter came in the mail from that pretty restrictive version of disability telling me “Sorry, you don’t qualify anymore. Bye-bye.” This would seem to be a devastating piece of news. And it was, for about two hours. And then in an instant, as if by the hand of God, my eyes opened to what it really meant. I have been given a gift. I have been set free. Suddenly, I have hope and motivation and spirit and true, honest happy again. If you look closely enough, you’ll see my heart dancing.

It is freakily like that first cortisone shot I got at the end of a horrible summer of pain several months before my first surgery. I had had no idea how much pain I was in; it crept in so slowly and it so seamlessly became a part of my being, I didn’t even notice it was there. And then for about two days following the shot (we were hoping for 4-6 months), I wasn’t in pain. The clouds of hurt and denial lifted long enough for me to really see the truth of my world. Only in its absence did I realize how much pain I had been in. And here I am again, seven years later, seeing things clearly again for the first time. This time, though, the relief is gonna last a whole lot longer than a weekend. It already has.