Light Bulb Moment
An epiphany can take your breath
away. It can hit you out of nowhere whether you are ready or not. That's
exactly what happened to me yesterday in a completely unexpected place.... the
M&M factory in Times Square, New York City. I was standing in the middle of
the second level, at the top of the escalator where it seemed as if hundreds of
people were trying to exit at any given moment----pushing and shoving their way
to any one of the many colorful destinations and speaking languages from all
over the world. I was waiting, somewhat anxiously, for my 11 year old daughter
to fill her bag with the perfect mix of rainbow-colored candy disks. "Meet
me right back here", I told her and though she was a stone's throw away, in
all that chaos I did not take my eyes off of her for a second.
I took her (surprisingly heavy) bag
of candy-coated chocolate and her tie-dye shirt toward the check out and sent my daughter to
wait with her siblings, cousin, and Aunt. For the next 25 minutes I
participated in the contact-sport that is waiting in line in a major retail
attraction in the heart NYC. When I finally paid, I went back to find my
family, who had been sitting on the heating vents by the large windows
overlooking the street, taking a well deserved break from the craziness of the
day. And that's when it happened, my epiphany, my light bulb moment, an instant of rare
but total clarity in my Lyme riddled world. What I understood at that moment
was a total surprise to me. As I looked out over the city I realized that I was
feeling well, that I was doing better, and that the Lyme treatment, as hideous
and life-altering as it was, had worked.
I was amazed. Amazed both because I had this
revelation in such an unexpected place but even more amazed because it didn't
occur to me that the treatment had worked until that very moment. I had been
off all antibiotics for 2 months, but because I am still dealing with other autoimmune issues, I couldn't really determine if the Lyme treatment had been successful. I couldn't be certain, that is, until I stared down at Times Square from
that particular spot yesterday.
In this case...location was
everything. Two summers ago we had all taken a similar end-of-the-summer family
day trip from Connecticut to NYC and yesterday was the first time I had been
back since. I had forgotten how silently and internally miserable that trip had
been because of how sick I really was. Around that time every day was silently
miserable and every day was filled with the frustration of suffering with an
as-yet-undetermined chronic and debilitating illness. Although I had forgotten
the seemingly unimportant
moment, I remembered that two years ago I sat on that very same heating
vent...wondering how I was ever going to find the energy to stand back up.
Never mind mustering the energy to collect my kids, keep them close at my side,
walk at a city pace, and take a subway a train and a car ride to get back home.
I had forgotten how the business of the city and the noises of the store had
overwhelmed me and made me dizzy, nauseous, and confused. Yesterday the memory
came crashing back because my sister in law had chosen to sit in the precise
location that would stir the recollection. It was a moment, I now realize, that
I needed
to recall so that I could finally understand how far I had come in those two
years.
Until yesterday, I really wasn't
certain where I was in the healing process. There are still so many things
remain uncertain about my health, things that still plague me and nag at me and
make me wonder if I will ever feel truly healthy. I still get tired, my mind is
still foggy, my sinus infections have returned, my frozen shoulder isn't
healed, and I still cannot tolerate aerobic activity. I still need to watch my
diet like a hawk, I can't tolerate alcohol and I can no longer carry a full
workload and still manage my house and my kids. In the monotony of my day to
day routine, these are the things that I was still roped in to focusing on: the
"still don'ts" and the "still can'ts". What I learned
yesterday is that sometimes you have to walk away from your routine to see your
situation a bit more clearly. A routine can be comfortable, but it also allows
us to wedge ourselves too tightly into our patterns...whether healthy or not.
Change...even if it is small and fleeting...gives us the opportunity to see the
world from a different perspective. A day trip to New York City is exactly the change in perspective this
country girl needed. It reminds me of how, when you have small children, you
don't notice them changing as they grow because you see them every day. Their
growth is so minute on a daily basis that it goes unnoticed and unappreciated
over time. Unnoticed, that is, until Great Aunt Hildie, who hasn't seen them in
a year, comes to visit. Though, as parents, we know our children intimately, it
is always Great Aunt Hildie who sees the physical transformation with clarity.
Yesterday's experience was like a
visit from Great Aunt Hildie, because in a split second I felt the clarity of
how far I had come. In an instant my internal mantra changed from "but, I
still can't..." to "Hey! Hold on a second, Maybe I Can". Even
though we had woken up early, taken a long train ride, and been in the city for
hours already, I realized that I still had energy and focus. I was not confused
by the onslaught of sights, smells, movements and noises as I had been during
my previous trip. I could carry a conversation with my sister-in-law while filtering out all the extraneous noises
around me. Best of all, I was enjoying myself. A sense of contentment had
replaced the constant fatigue and anxiety that were symptomatic of my long battle
with Lyme disease. I was not only able to tolerate the day, but actually feel
as if I was thriving in arguably the most sensory-overwhelming and exhausting
place on earth. If you have ever had Lyme, you know how difficult it is to
multi-task in the quiet of your own home, forget about functioning in such a
fast-paced "city that never sleeps" kind of place. You may also
understand why being able to successfully function in such an environment would
be eye opening and encouraging. Yesterday I learned a life changing lesson. I
realized that progress is not synonymous with perfection and that you can
experience the process of healing even if you are not yet fully healed. The
still-can'ts may be a permanent fixture in my life, but one thing is for sure:
looking down for a second time on the streets of New York City taught me for
certain that things are actually looking up.
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