On the morning of my 30th birthday I didn't awaken and run to the mirror to check for gray hair. I didn't examine my face for new wrinkles. I didn't yank on jeans from my junior year of high school for a quick comparison. When I awoke on the morning of my 30th birthday, I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, smiled, and said, "Thank you."
I've addressed before on this blog my past conviction that I would not survive to see 30. It wasn't some fatalistic, grumpy idea that things would end in fire and brimstone for me. It was more of a Y2K thing. Remember Y2K? When we were all vaguely anxious that the world would just stop since the computers didn't know how to function past the year 2000? That's how I felt about 30. It wasn't that I assumed there'd be some catastrophe. It was simply that I hadn't calculated my life span past age 29. There's a reason for that.
When I was a child I could only see what was in front of me. Small kids lack the capacity for true foresight; they see what's there, and they assume that's all there is. I saw chaos, and I assumed chaos was all that was. As I grew older, the chaos around me continued, but the chaos within me became even more dramatic. I was not the most well-balanced teenager. I took everything so personally, felt everything so deeply, was so desperately insecure. I didn't foster within myself the sort of long-term optimism that is sustaining in times of hurt. As I ventured into adulthood, got married, started a family, my maturity increased in spades, but my ability to conceptualize the future never kicked in.
To be honest, in my mind, everything stopped at 30. I had endured too much emotionally. How much can one person take? Then there was the physical piece. My body began taking its lumps during puberty. The hammer continued to fall for years. Every time I relapsed into my anorexia and bulimia, my body found it harder to keep its strength. Over and over I'd lose weight and I'd lose resistance. Over and over I'd beat my organs, my muscles, my bones down, and they'd have a tougher time getting up again. This last time, as I lay in the emergency room with a belly so infected it was a wonder I was coherent at all, I thought, "I can't do this again. One more time and I'm gone."
A funny thing happened in that moment. I gathered some resolve. I was in a hospital by myself, many miles from home, fighting for my life. My family and friends weren't there to comfort or guide me. I had my God, my doctors, and the tiny part of myself that had some fight left. When I gained a little strength I began to pace the halls of the hospital. It was good for my gut, the doctors said. So I walked. I walked through the emergency room and watched people in the throes of drug overdoses. I walked into the Catholic chapel and watched doctors and nurses on their knees beside patients and their desperate loved ones. I walked through the cardiac care unit and watched families praying over the still bodies of their sick loves ones. I walked through the maternity unit and paused to watch the brand new babies, tiny humans with infinite potential and no baggage to tie them down. I dragged my IV behind me and took the elevator all the way to the top floor of the hospital. I couldn't go to the roof where the helicopters landed, so I stopped just below it and hovered near the door. I waited until I could hear a chopper land. I backed up to clear the way for the emergency team, and I watched as a cluster of frantic, selfless first responders threw themselves into the care of a person they had never met.
That experience, so sick and so alone in a hospital far from home, was a turning point. It gave me a glimpse into just how much we ALL struggle. Just how hard we ALL have it from time to time. I used to think my pain was unique. Now I know that I share it with billions of my brothers and sisters. That solidarity, that awareness of the vulnerability of the world, may have been what saved me. It may have been good medicine and a body that wasn't quite ready to quit, but I believe that much of what got me out of that hospital was the promise that I wasn't alone, and that I would be okay.
So when I awoke a few days ago to a decade I never thought I'd see, I wasn't dismayed. I wasn't angry. I wasn't afraid. Rather, I marveled at how someone who was so terribly unhappy, so awfully hurt for such a long time could awaken with a deep breath, a smile, and a simple, "Thank you."
My friends, if you are in pain, if you are scared, if you can't imagine things ever getting better, please hear these words: If I could come from the torment that I used to know and make it to the absolute fulfillment that I enjoy now, so can you. I used to be a sad, mad, wildly confused kid who couldn't imagine happiness. Now I am a joyful, silly, wildly contended wife, mother, friend, and teacher who couldn't ask for a better life. IT DOES GET BETTER. IT WILL GET BETTER. But you have to keep going. No matter what, no matter how sure you are that it's all going to fall apart, no matter what nightmare you may find yourself in, you MUST keep going. None of us knows what awaits us just around the corner. We have to be willing to turn the corner in order to find out. Bless you.
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