In a time known I was married to a mathematician. It was an odd choice for both of us because I still use my fingers to add when having an anxiety attack. I’m sure it was challenging for both of us!
What killed the marriage was not my numerical dyslexia, what murdered it was my chronic illness. He was, in his own words, “all healed out”…and who could blame him? I still am not healed from the illness. Only now, countless decades later, have I finally healed from the loss of love, of that particular love that was offered by him and his family.
Recently a trusted friend told me that I sometimes retreated to a childlike state. Actually I think he said “childish” — if truth be known. It stung me, because he wasn’t suggesting it was a delightful Annie Hall trait of mine. It was an annoying trait of mine. I thought about working hard to correct it, at least in his presence. I thought about the fact I was largely unaware of it. I was however aware that I had been scolded by him.
It made me think about lives lived with illness and disability, with little or no reprieve. It’s made me think about the alternative world I live in which I’ve called the Planet of the Unwell. I turned to Virginia Woolf not because I was thinking about immediate suicide. But because I admire how she continued on for as long as she did when so very ill with depression, in her case. All the feminist correction to the record notwithstanding, I still admire Leonard Woolf for not leaving her, despite his flaws and mistakes.
At some point, if you are never going to be a well person, you’re likely to be scolded. The patience of those around you will fray and they will say hurtful things. You will say rash and intemperate things because you can’t help it, although you try, sometimes you try with all your might.
The holidays are difficult for many or most of us for all sorts of reasons. For the unwell, the sick, the disabled, the holidays are not always deck the halls with boughs of happiness.…if you’re with someone or in a family, you’re likely to want them to be happy and your status makes that challenging. If you’re alone and unlikely to be remembered at the holidays, the isolation of illness becomes an even more predominant reality. I fight the feeling of abandonment, but not very successfully.
I don’t have holiday presents to offer my readers, but I offer Virginia on illness and behavior –
“There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional), a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truth blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.”
Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill, 1947
And by the way, the Stone Sage Lion reminds me that the 333rd of the year is a palindrome — which means something that reads the same backward as forward. Mathematicians tend to like them. Mine did. I think the 333rd day of this difficult year is a warning to me to stop going over and over the hurts I’ve sustained as well as the things I’ve done wrong. The challenge is to move forward to another year …with hope, however guarded. The even more daunting challenge right now is to move through December with some amount of joy and without a clenched jaw and grinding teeth. Stone Sage Lion says if not, I’m likely to turn to stone as well and spend the winter outside with him…on the terrace.
That’s it for us today, the 333rd day of the first year of the second decade of the 21st century!! Stay Warm, in body, mind and heart. Compassion and forgiveness still trump almost any other available gift we have to give another living being.
©Alida Brill 2011
Thank you so much for this, Alida. What a powerful statement from Woolf. Yes, we in the Planet of the Unwell (I love your phrase) have no patience for platitudes and are more likely to speak the truth. In that way, I like to think that we are living our lives in a genuine and open-hearted manner.
Thank you Toni for reminding me again of the things that illness does give us not just take from us.
Illness and disability cut through what really ends up amounting to “the small stuff” and gets to the “meat” of it all, of life. I find that few who are well and able quite “get” this. Are we wiser or better? Maybe, maybe not, but our truth is not any less valid, even if it is not always safe to confess. I go through blurting phases and silent phases. I still don’t know which I prefer! And, love, ah, love. It commands both, I suppose.
Thanks Laura. For me, still, well, maybe not so much now, I think the desire and the dream was that love would trump the disability of the able ones to understand. Like you, I find this usually not the case. Are we wiser? Are we better humans, probably not, but I think we have learned patience. As this is the only life the two of us have experienced, our truths have an eerie connection.
Alida … Thank you. I’ve just passed nearly two hours reading your blog at Psychology Today and now I’m here … I feel like I’ve just become acquainted with the written voice of an intellectual and experiential cousin
The experience of long illness / grave injury comes through your words as a universal experience … Your stories are evocative, powerful variations on the human condition … I mean this in admiration when I say that I quickly forgot, while reading, that you have a specific autoimmune illness (something I live with as well). It’s a rare writer who delves so deeply into what we all have in common, while making such powerful statements about your own experience and learnings. Much, much appreciated … I’m linking your blog with mine.
What a gift you have given me in your response. I“ve just returned earlier from the hospital for a chemo infusion…for the infamous disease…You have given me a boost, beyond
what you might know. i will have my friend tomorrow link my blog to yours as well…I was reading you for a bit after this message. With gratitude. The work harder to stay above and beyond disease these days…I’ll try even more in the morning! Thank you.…
Alida, I’ve found that there are few sweeter joys in life than to realize that one is being understood … Sweetest relief!
I brought home today the book that you’ve written with Michael Lockshin … There are two copies at my city’s library … I’m going to purchase two as well … One for me and one for my physician. I’ve skimmed your book and am going to tuck it away until right after Christmas — and then I’m going to dive in
I’m coming up on four years with consistent illness … and a sense of resolution — an evolving acceptance — so the timing of encountering your thoughts is a real gift.
However you celebrate this time of year … I wish you all the joys of Light’s return
And the sweetest joy to be read by another writer who understands. Thank you for finding me.
For all the lights that are shared by each living being now in winter’s quiet celebrations of place, mind, time,
joys — collective and solitary.
Happy holidays to you, new friend.
always,
A.