Today, during my walk with the dog, I was ruminating about my life. I mean, what else does one do when walking the dog? We go on our adventure of sniffing and peeing. We find it works best if I sniff and he pees. The other way around caused way too much confusion in the neighborhood. And the restraining orders were becoming an issue.
Anyway, I realized that I am working on getting healthy while being surrounded by illness and death. Way too many deaths have happened around me this year. And illness? Gee, where to start. There is Dad with his weak heart, the dog with his assorted illnesses, my son who is bipolar and suffers from severe anxiety disorder, my daughter's difficulties, and on and on.
I am a person who tends to not just sense, but take on, the feelings of those around me, especially my kids. So when my child is in crisis, so am I. I often don't know where my own feelings and opinions end and theirs begin. I am working on finding my edges, my borders if you will. But I am not firm on them yet. My kids are both very strong personalities who tend to blow up and then it's over. I am usually downwind of the blowup and, while they get it out and get over it, I don't. I carry the stress of the situation long after it ends. So, afterwards, they are fine and I am not. My son is particularly bad. He lives with us and I find myself walking on eggshells around him. He is very loving, smart and tender. He is also very volatile. Much like his father, even though he was raised by me. This may sound bad, but I am relieved that I rarely see him for long. He is my relief for my times off, but otherwise we don't see him much. He gets up at around 1pm, is gone by 2pm and doesn't come home until long after Dad and I are in bed. Phew.
So I often walk around with my stomach tied up in knots for days at a time, waiting for the next thing; waiting for the next crisis. And then I find myself anticipating these crises. For instance, my cat is 16 1/2. She is really old. One day in the fairly near future I will have to either make a decision concerning her life or I will find her dead. Soon, I will have to tell her goodbye. I wait for my Dad to have a heart attack. Or the dog to go into heart failure. Or, maybe just maybe, the sky will actually fall. Perhaps this is the reason why, even though I have lost a lot of weight, my blood pressure has not come down?
Has anyone ever read the Sweet Pickle book called The Very Worried Walrus? I highly recommend it. It explains a lot.
So now, after spewing all this, I come to the answer to my question to myself during the walk this morning - how do I get healthy when surrounded by illness and death? The answer is, I have no choice. I have to get healthy, even while surrounded. I have to maintain my health and try to improve it. I Have To. Because to not move in the direction of health and strength means that I become part of the illness and death. It means that I lose the ability to help anyone else. It means that I lie down, give up and die. And how will that help anything? Who, then, would take care of Dad? Of Puffy? Or anything else?
So, each morning, I get up with the intention of improving my health. Some days I fall on my face. Most days, I do not. But every single morning, I get up. I take care of what I need to take care of. I do the best I can with the tools I have at hand. And if I fall, I fall. And then I get up and keep going. Every. Single. Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment