Five years ago last night I felt sick. I was eating dinner and felt a wave of dizziness hit me. I excused myself from dinner and went to lay down.
Five years ago today, I woke up feeling dizzy and not quite myself. I helped some people move some heavy boxes down some steps, and had to steady myself going back up them. I thought I had an ear infection, or a sinus infection, or just some flu that was making me feel tired, dizzy and unstable on my feet.
Five years ago this afternoon I was convinced not to fly back to New Jersey from St. Louis, but to take a “road trip” since I wasn’t feeling well. The discussion seemed odd given the time it would take to drive back to New Jersey, and the time Heather would need to drive back. But she insisted, and I was feeling too sick to disagree. I could only look back now and understand it was a conversation that likely saved my life.
Five years ago tonight I was heading back from St. Louis to New Jersey in a Jeep Wrangler on a highway instead of at 35,000 feet when I felt a strange feeling of numbness cross my face. I then loss all ability to control my arm and leg, and immediately asked to be taken to an emergency room, an emergency room that was minutes, not hours, away.
Why?”
“Because I’m having a stroke.”
Five years ago my life changed forever. In the ensuing weeks I would be told by doctors and physical therapists what I would not be able to do, what I could not do, and what I would need to accept as “the new normal”. I was told not to expect too much, and that recovery would be a “marathon, not a sprint.” I would be told to slow down and to lower my expectations. I would be made to feel like all I could expect out of life would be blindness, a walker or a wheelchair, and a slow recovery to whatever functionality I could find.
My intuition told me something else. My heart demanded more, and my mind decided to heed that those voice instead of those I did not know. I went at my own pace, doing things no one had instructed me to do. Soon, I was doing things they said I couldn’t do. Then I was doing more than they thought possible. Then I was ready for the next phase of my recovery.
Given my condition, I was told I’b be in the hospital for a month. I was discharged after 10 days, and headed to an inpatient rehab facility. I could not see, and needed assistance walking, but I knew something inside of me was stirring. I was ready. I was able. I would make the best use of this recovery possible. I would use this time to learn a new way of living and of looking at life. I would learn that every challenge I faced up until that moment on a highway, every success and every failure, had prepared me . Honestly, I used every bit of my life’s experience to recover, and every bit of my recovery to enhance my life’s experience.
Today, my life is much different than it was 5 years ago. I’ve mostly recovered save some bouts of instability on the rocks I hike on and some worry whenever I feel physically “off”. I still have issues heading down the trail, but it’s not like it was. The biggest change has been a positive one – that fire born inside me 5 years ago today has never left. I know who I am. I understand the code I live by. I don’t relinquish my power often to the fear the shouts at me from every angle. Instead, I hear the voice within me whisper and I heed it’s encouragement.
And I never relinquish my power to another human being. I never readily agree to the limitations they wish to place on me. I let those lines they draw in the proverbial sands be lines they adhere to, but not lines I use as my own. I make my own agreements in my own way, and I never surrender to fear that does not agree with my inner voice. Fear pretends to be a voice within when in reality it is nothing more than someone else’s voice pretending to be my own.
Being strong is easy when you are sitting in your comfort zone, sipping on your favorite drink watching others charge up hills around you. Finding your weakness is easy when your world is falling apart and the certainty of your reality is in question. There is, however, nothing like being strong in the whirlpool of your weakness and of finding your fortitude in the muck that wants to to quit the race. I’m not sure that is what I did, but it sure felt that way.
Five years ago last night I started to lose it all.
Five years ago today everything was lost to the certainty of my mortality.
Five years ago tomorrow I discovered the truth.