Sickness and in Health

“In sickness and in health.”

When we say those words in our wedding vows, we imagine a bad flu, a surgery, maybe a difficult season. We don’t imagine a lifetime.

I think the hardest part of living with chronic illness isn’t always the pain. It isn’t the medications, the appointments, the surgeries, or the endless tests that somehow never seem to answer the question.

The hardest part is grieving someone who is still alive.

Yourself.

It’s waking up one day and realizing you’ll never be the person you used to be. Realizing that no matter how hard you fight, how many specialists you see, how perfectly you follow every recommendation, your life may never look the way it once did.

Imagine catching a cold that never goes away.

Imagine an injury that never heals.

Imagine trying everything you possibly can to get better, only to discover that getting better isn’t something you can will into existence.

That is chronic illness.

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Today was, in many ways, an ordinary day.

My husband was sitting with our boys, going through old photographs we had forgotten were tucked away in an external drive. I was in the next room, lying on the floor because lately it hurts just as much to sit up as it does to sit down.

From where I was lying, I could see the computer screen.

One picture caught my eye.

It was my husband and I standing at Angels Landing, our favorite place on earth. We were standing at the summit, overlooking what felt like the edge of the world. We looked so young. So alive. So full of possibility.

For just a second, I could almost remember exactly how that day felt.

Then my husband smiled at the boys and said,

“Look, boys. A picture of Mommy and me… when we used to be happy.”

Everyone smiled.

Everyone moved on.

Except me.

Those words lodged themselves somewhere deep inside my chest.

I looked around the room, wondering if anyone else had felt the weight of what had just been said.

Maybe no one else did.

Or maybe I was the only one it hurt.

Because it was true.

Those pictures really were from when we used to be happy.

Over the past year, I’ve spent less and less time laughing with my children. Less time making memories. Less time living.

Instead, I feel suspended in time, like my life has been placed in stasis while everyone else’s keeps moving forward.

I’m always waiting.

Waiting for answers.

Waiting for healing.

Waiting for the next appointment.

Waiting for tomorrow to somehow be different than today.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m waiting for anymore.

I just know I’m waiting.

Those words keep echoing in my mind.

When we used to be happy.

Then my mind wanders to all the other sentences that begin the same way.

When we used to travel.

When we used to laugh.

When we used to be spontaneous.

When we used to be intimate.

When we used to dream about growing old together instead of surviving one more day.

Maybe even…

When we used to love each other the way we once did.

I don’t want those words to be true.

But pretending they don’t exist doesn’t make them disappear.

Chronic illness changes more than your body.

It changes marriages.

It changes friendships.

It changes family dynamics.

It changes who you are allowed to become.

There is a grief that comes from losing your health.

But there is another grief that no one talks about, the grief of watching the people you love lose pieces of you, too.

I know my husband didn’t choose this life any more than I did.

He didn’t marry chronic illness.

He married me.

And sometimes I wonder how much of me is still left beneath all the pain.

I’m turning forty in a few days.

That number feels impossibly heavy.

People ask where I see myself ten years from now.

The truth is…

I can’t even picture tomorrow.

When every day hurts, imagining another decade can feel overwhelming.

Not because I don’t love my life.

Not because I don’t love my children.

But because I am so incredibly tired.

Sometimes I wonder if what I long for is for my life to end, or simply for the suffering to stop.

Those are not the same thing.

I don’t have a beautiful lesson to wrap this up with today.

I don’t have a hopeful quote or a silver lining.

Today, I just have honesty.

Today, I’m grieving.

I’m grieving the woman in that photograph.

I’m grieving the marriage we once had.

I’m grieving the mother I wanted to be.

I’m grieving the future I thought I was promised.

If you’ve ever found yourself mourning a life that still exists, but no longer feels like your own, I hope you know you’re not alone.

Some days, surviving is the bravest thing we do.

Today is one of those days.

And for today, that has to be enough.

I leave you with an image of who I used to be and where to follow me. https://www.instagram.com/zebranetwork/