I Could Never
We all have moments in life, where we’re looking from the outside in on a situation someone is going through and think to ourselves, “I could never survive that. There’s just no way.” It can be a health issue, moving to a foreign country, making a complete 180 career change, ending a long-term relationship, or a death of a loved one. The moments we can’t imagine going through are often hard and life changing. Until a moment comes for us, and it forces us to find a way to survive it. Somehow, we magically adapt. We make changes and come out the other side forever changed, and a little wiser for having lived through it. Human beings are extremely resilient creatures. We have survived the test of time. Life is filled with moments that make us, sometimes moments that break us before they make us. While we’re in these moments, we can never see the end. It seems like life is crumbling around us. We’re falling apart.
There comes a point in these unimaginable times that we hit a fork in the road. We’re faced with a decision to either give up or keep going. Do we go left or right? Those that make the choice to keep going are the people who succeed. The people we tend to look up to in amazement at all their accomplishments and think, “I wish I could be more like them.” The people that choose to push through in the hardest moments are the ones that experience the most growth in life. They’re the ones that know that there are better days ahead. They choose discipline over their feelings. On days that they don’t feel like it, they still do. Then, one day, when it’s least expected, there’s a speck of light. The tunnel opens and they’re finally able to breathe a little easier. I wanted to be one of the successful ones, so I made a choice.
Well Maybe I Could..
Months later, I still can’t believe I had a stroke. A lot of times, even when I was going through it, it just didn’t seem real. Looking back, I’m really amazed and proud of myself. It’s incredible the amount of fear we have to stare in the face. I’ve never considered myself brave. I’ve always been a scaredy cat, holding myself back because what if (insert the worst possible outcome to a situation) were to happen. I think I’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities and life experiences because of this mentality. Somehow, when the universe handed me the scariest experience of my life, something so unknown and foreign to me, I found courage. Maybe that’s one of the reasons God put me face to face with this challenge; to show me I can do the hard things even when they’re scary. I figured it out as we so often do. It’s crazy. I saw moments like this every day working in the ICU, but when it becomes your reality, it hits so differently.
I think one of the most important things I learned was to accept that this was my reality. Denial wasn’t going to help me get through this. I needed to understand that this was going to change a lot of things for some time, but this is actually happening. I had to pivot my mindset. I had to change my focus from what I couldn’t do anymore right now to how do I transform, learn from this, and become even better than before.
During this time, I was faced with a lot of challenges. Luckily, I had my brother close by, but the rest of my family was dispersed across the world. My two other siblings live in another state, and my dad had left just a couple weeks prior for a five month stay in his brand-new built home in the Philippines. Perfect time universe. Despite having them checking in on me all the time, there’s nothing like having people physically around during a hard time. There’s a certain comfort to it, but I couldn’t concentrate on what I didn’t have because I had a tough road ahead and I could conquer it, if I took it one day at a time, instead of trying to climb a whole mountain in a day.
Actually, I Can & I Did.
I had to change my routine. I had to learn to give myself grace. I wasn’t where I used to be physically, and it would take hard work, time, and patience to work my way back up. There were definitely moments of frustration. Moments where I felt I wasn’t doing enough or progressing as fast as I should’ve been or just pissed at the world because I could do the things I was struggling so hard with now with no problem before. I still had a lot of fear in my days, but I found the courage in me to keep taking steps forward. No matter how small those steps were, no matter what the amount of time it took me, forward motion became my focus. That’s how we end up making it through situations we never thought we could. Days turned into weeks that turned into months of progress. Before I knew it, things were closer to normal than they weren’t.
Celebrating the small moments of progress: being able to ditch my walker, balancing while closing my eyes, strolling around the grocery store for the first time, walking outside for ten minutes, driving. All those firsts add up. Almost five months post stroke and I’m still a work in progress. I’m still fine-tuning things and finding ways to improve and be even better than I was before I had the stroke, but I am living proof that you can do the hard things. You can survive and adapt and whatever shitty situation you’ve found yourself in, whether self-provoked or not, you can overcome. I hope you always choose to keep going.
The proof is in the rewrite. Here’s to redefining priorities, embracing life, and healing out loud.
Xo-J
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