Last weekend, my partner wrote this Gofundme to help me raise the necessary funds to cover my upcoming medical costs. I am grateful for this—this care, this support—and I am overwhelmed by it, too. I have been living out of my body all week, grappling with the reality that I had no other option than to share this health news with everyone I know pretty much as soon as I learned of it myself. I have had no time to process privately, no time to grieve, accept, or find peace with this new information.
I am not an urgent person. I take my time, I process big decisions for weeks & months before following through, I navigate the waters of my own life slowly and methodically. This news, specifically my liver damage, is urgent. It has sliced through all of my patterns and methods, all of my slowness. I wasn’t ready to ask for help. I wasn’t ready and it doesn’t matter that I wasn’t ready. I had to. I have to. I need help. I’m still asking.
I feel distracted. By everything swirling in and around me. I am distracted from the sheer beauty of this week—witnessing over a hundred people in my community show up for me by sharing and contributing—because I am processing and trying to learn more about this illness I have probably had for even longer than my RA. I am distracted from accepting the reality of my health by the yuckier parts of this whole process: reducing mutual aid down to numbers, to “goals” and finish lines, to asking for money when there is a genocide in Palestine and another genocide in Sudan and another genocide in the Congo and multiple genocides here against our Black community and our trans community.
I feel afraid that I can’t contain these distractions all at once. They are so at odds with one another, they are so confusing. I need more time, more space, and I don’t have that option. I try to sit still but then I feel something boil over inside of me. I can sense a lot of unresolved anger from months ago and years ago. I’m crying all the time—it’s literally spilling out of me because I can’t contain it.
These distractions are what I call “the storm.” It rages around me, it rages inside of me, and I cannot see through it. I am afraid of it. I am afraid. I want to hide, I want to make it go away, but I can’t make it go away. I must simply wait it out. The storm will pass.
This is a lesson in trust.
I understand why some people believe in god, in a higher power. Trust, or faith, is all we have in the end.
Trust is the antidote to panic, to anger, to self-doubt.
Trust is the antidote to the spasm of heartbreak you feel when someone close to you admits they feel embarrassed sharing your gofundme.
Trust is the antidote to fear.
Trust is the antidote to the soft pools of grief that collect in your stomach when you understand that no partner has ever given you the care you’ve needed until now.
This is also a lesson in focus.
Focus is the antidote to distraction, to the storm.
Focus is the antidote to equating your self worth with the length of the little green bar that shows you how close or far away a sick person is from reaching their mutual aid goal.
Focus is the antidote to feeling so heavy all the time.
Focus is the antidote to feeling sorry for yourself.
Focus is the antidote to victim mentality.
Focus is the one thing we can do when we feel out of control: we can focus on what makes us feel like ourselves.
This is also a lesson in surrender.
Surrender is the antidote to urgency.
Surrender is the antidote to perfectionism.
Surrender is the antidote to refreshing the page.
Surrender is the antidote to social media.
Surrender is, truly, the key to uninhibited art making, to uninhibited health-building.
Surrender is waiting out the storm.
In health and in art, trust and focus and surrender come together to form a very sturdy kind of shelter. Trust and focus and surrender help us weather the storm.
In this last week of Devotion Month I am remaining committed to trust. I remain committed to focusing on what makes me feel a little more like myself. I will stay focused on my writing, focused on taking care of myself. I remain devoted to not knowing how any of this will turn out. I commit to my own surrender. I’m done trying to convince anyone that I deserve this care, that I deserve anything at all. It will all happen as it’s meant to. I’m going to stop hurting myself by descending into the throes of stress, anxiety, and worry. I am going to read a lot (Beautyland has been the perfect distraction this week). I am going to drink a lot of tea (my dear friends at Leaves & Flowers make my favorites). I am going to finish writing my novel (I’m on the last chapter). I am going to love those around me and let myself be loved.
Let me leave you with a poem that made me weep this week.
Thanks for reading.
Just contributed. Sending love. xxJen
a potent blessing, to witness the Big Care between you and your beloved 💜