The 4th of July is about celebrating freedom, but how free are you?
I know when I was in the throes of pain from my autoimmune symptoms, I felt anything but free. I felt tortured, constrained, frustrated, angry. Nothing like the peace and ease I would describe when defining freedom.
My symptoms rules my life. Tethered to pain without my having consented. How my day was going to go was known the moment I placed my feet on my bedroom floor. My swollen and inflamed feet screaming the moment they brushed the carpet. Limping to the bathroom to start a day I knew would be in survival. Or the mornings I awoke with a dull pressure in my eye from uveitis, that gradually increased to a stabbing pain when a dim light grew slightly brighter. Or when I rolled out of bed only to feel the tightness in my lower back and hip. Aching to the point of neither sitting, nor standing, nor laying down brought much relief.
I felt like prisoner to my psoriatic arthritis. Captive to the power of pain, fear and uncertainty. I clung to the hope that someday, somehow things would change.
Gradually and gratefully, they did. Today I celebrate my freedom.
To me, freedom is living a life unencumbered.
Freedom was finding the woman within who refused to be a victim of her condition because she knew there is more meant for her in this life.
My illness, a symptom of something not being right. My symptoms, proving how hard my body was fighting for me. My condition, a gift once I allowed it.
Autoimmune disease was freedom from the good girl I’d always tried so hard to be. The good girl I thought I had to be to ensure safety. But being her didn’t keep me safe from bad things happening. The guaranteed security was always an illusion.
Operating from rules of perfection didn’t keep me safe. Once my illness struck, I was free to be the woman I wanted to be. The woman I need to be.
I slowly unburdened myself from the weight of other people’s opinions. I started to silence the loud mouthed mean girl who took up residence in my head so, so long ago. There are days where I still struggle with her telling me I’m not good enough or that I’m doing it wrong, but toning her out is a lot easier when I remember listening to her only closed me off from happiness.
I now choose to listen to and follow the quieter voice inside of me. The soft spoken, if-I-don’t-pay-attention-I’ll-miss-it voice. The voice I ignored for far too long. I listen to her over the deafening chaos and distractions of the outside world.
My autoimmune disease was my freedom.
It gave me my life back. Life, which I had not until then realized, I wasn’t fully living.
On the other side of healing I found freedom from pain, perfectionism and fear. On the other side of healing was the me I hid away because I didn’t think she, I, was enough just as I was. My health collapse was my opportunity to rediscover her. To rediscover myself and the life I was always meant to live.
On the other side of healing was, and is, my freedom.
