Keep Going

I sat on the beach a few weeks back and thought I might go for a walk. It'd started to seem like I moved to this great city with great weather yet I spent much of my time sleeping, or working, or reading in my bed. Watching marathons of The Wire as my muscles atrophied, as my body gave in to the disease. I sat on the beach thinking that I had come out here to find more, to seek more, to do more. I got up and walked a couple of miles and when I came back, I felt good.

I've always been fairly athletic but after a lupus flare or hospitalization, I tend to give up. To lay down. For a long time, I let it make me lazy. I let it take control. And I was tired of feeling that way, so after my walk on the beach, I went for a jog. And then a run. And then a hike. And it hurts but it hurts in a good way, the pain proving the change, the change I need.

Sometimes a good distance feels like a slap in the face to my sore muscles. So I stop and stretch my legs, pulling them, forcing the air into spaces tight and mad. The stretches feel like stopping for gas after you hit 100 miles and the E is blaring and you're tired and thirsty and out of fuel. I stretch, switch the song on my iPod, and continue on. I look at my wrist: KEEP GOING, written in black marker before I left the apartment. I go higher.

Soon, I will turn around and go home and feel anything but defeated because even though I struggled and my breath was short and my legs are tired, I am doing more. I am pushing myself. I am seeing beyond the disease.

I am not my disease, I am me.