PROGRESS.

I have noticed that the most successful parents are those who adjust.   A lot of parents tend to see their children as static.  Perhaps this is not true when they are changing grades every year.  After all, there is a huge difference between a first grader and a second grader.  The change is outward and apparent.  Even the change in height makes the inward changes more noticeable.  But when kids get out of high school and start moving on in life, it's almost like there is a drop- off, a time when parents forget that their children are still changing, still learning, still failing, still insecure, still vulnerable.

They don't adjust.  

I have been lucky enough to have parents who see not as a child or a completely self-sufficient adult.  They see me as I am: a post- graduate adult who still needs a whole lot of help in life and grace during times where I'm weak, inexperienced or uncertain.

In a way, I don't blame those parents who are clueless in this way, because I myself feel similarly sometimes.  Though I am not a parent, I experience this feeling in my sickness.  When it comes down to it, the core issue is a lack of perspective.  Just as parents aren't able to separate from their children enough to see where they are at NOW, so I cannot separate from my view of myself in sickness.  Okay, that might not make a lot of sense...Let me try to explain: 

When you first get sick, you view yourself as a "healthy person" who is experiencing sickness.  When sickness lingers, you go through all the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression & finally, acceptance.)   When then terrible cycle is through, you land a place where you can see yourself as a "sick person" without grief or self-pity.  It is just a way of thinking.  It is a way to filter life through a grid that helps it make sense.  Instead of struggling all the time and feeling angry and that you can't feel like "normal people," you make the change to assume that you can't do anything.  That way, if by some miracle you are able to go, it is a celebration!  And that is where I've been at for well over a year now.  (The whole grief process was about 6-8 months.)  

The problem is, with Lyme anyway, the symptoms are not always predictable.  The "growth" so to speak is unpredictable, which means that there are seasons, weeks, days and sometimes even hours when  the sickness seems to leave your body...  There are days when I'm functioning almost as though I were normal...And it is in those moments, when I find myself in crisis.  Who am I? How do I function in the world?  Am I sick person who is having a well moment or am I changing gears?  Am I going to heal now?  It is giant and exhausting mind game that anyone who is sick goes through regularly.  It is that tension that exhausts even those who have been through many horrors and tragedies.  Even the strongest of people feel this and knows it's pain...

Am I an adult or a kid?

Am I a sick person or well person?

Am I normal?

Should I 'do' or rest?

How do other people view me in all this?