An associate directs me to Virginia Woolf’s essay.
It is an act of kindness, I suppose,
but the solace I seek is not there.
For Virginia, illness is only physical;
a chance to rest and look up,
to see the sky,
to fall deeper into the meaning of poetry.
My condition is cruel,
impacting body and brain,
movement and cognition,
with pain thrown in
like the bonus buy no-one wants.
I cannot stop and think about it,
about the life passing me by.
I cannot.
So, I put my head down,
willing myself to be better.
I tell everyone,
I tell myself,
I’m on the mend.
I’m recovering.
The worst is past.
Yet here I am, not better,
aware of what I am missing,
of what I have lost,
and what I will no longer have.
My love of movement.
Being capable and competent
of lead-climbing a black route,
of hiking with a ridiculously heavy pack,
of running up, then down, Preikestolen.
Days full of activity, walking, teaching, talking, laughing,
playing with my dogs.
In reality,
if I can take my surviving dog for a 5-minute walk,
then it is a good day, indeed.
A trainer at the gym once said to me,
Stacey, I always think of you
with your hair flying out behind,
always heading somewhere quickly,
always smiling.
Moving and smiling.
This pretence has caught up with me,
this attempt to trick myself.
Believing I could win against this condition,
To recover what is already gone.
I’m not one to give up.
Yet fight takes energy.
Energy I need to dress myself,
to eat, to feed my pets.
Some days, I can do most of this.
Some days, I manage nothing at all.
In Virginia’s essay,
I searched for hope.
I found none.
