The Greatest Currency

I have been up all night, so forgive any typos or grammar errors. I am frustrated and I feel like saying this, and so, I will.

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I know it cannot be fully appreciated until it's gone but do one thing for me, today. 

Cherish your health, your sleep, your ability to rely on your body to walk or go out or even watch TV. Cherish it. Think about it. Just think about your feet and your hands and how nice it is to move and dance and breathe. How lovely cold tile feel on barefeet in the summer and how good water pressure can make you suddenly awake.

Teach yourself to remember this when you are dealing with a sick or elderly friend or family member. Try to remember how upset and annoyed you are when you have a cold or a stomach bug or allergies. How you feel failed and frustrated and cranky. Imagine how the chronically ill and dying feel about their bodies, constantly in pain and criminally uncomfortable.

Good health is freedom. Good health is a currency to covet. Good health is everything. And for the past few weeks, I especially have lusted for it. 

Because It is so much harder to be without it and still want to live. It is so much harder to be a friend because hiding away is easier, because your pain is not on display, because you can sleep and in sleep, you are free. Living without health does not take away the world's beauties or reasons to stay alive, but it leaves you feeling caged. Stuck in the exit row of the plane that waits listlessly on the tarmac as you alternate between feeling hot and cold.

So, please:

Love your body and take care of it. These are things I need to do, and I think we should all do them together. We should all learn these lessons together. Good health doesn't last forever. But let's make it last for as long as we can.

And thank you to all of you who have shown me kindness along the way. It means the world to me.

Love,

Kelly

the house with history

i am waiting for sleep when the walls start to fall down.

my leg kicks out an involuntary spasm and then two more. i count the pills i have taken. i think maybe it is anxiety but it is not. my sugar is crashing.

my body looks so whole. the parts that are missing were on the inside and looking at me, you might not guess that my appendix is gone, and my thyroid too.

i was whole once. i did not have nightmares.

they should take the pancreas, i think. it does not work anymore; occasionally it sputters out the insulin that everyone else's body makes without issue. it is frustrating when that happens because i have taken replacement insulin and so now my body is filled with too much insulin and i have to eat carbs and fat to absorb the overflow. i shake and sound drunk until i find food.

i never know the days the pancreas will want to work. i do not yet understand. is there an algorithm, a method? i do not know. i chart it, i count, i keep track. i use math and my body laughs.

tonight the walls fall down. the foundation lets out one last whiff of dust and so the house reacts. and i get dizzy and i crawl my way toward the refrigerator, full of juice and cheese and peanut butter and i eat the recommended amount until the dust settles and the numbers on my meter say okay, okay now.

i know this is no cure.