Reflections on dance and life #4

When I got the virus I denied that I was sick. I refused help for a week until I moved into my parents. After a couple weeks convalescence I returned to pushing, denying, and ultimately learning the hard way that I was prolonging the recovery. A couple of months passed, I got better. I felt about 90%. My first shift back at work.
I wasn’t really better.
I had no idea how fragile that “better” was. A relapse of PVFS/onset of CFS occurred and finally I accept I am not ok. I am so shocked at my exhaustion that I stare at my hands expecting to see decrepit elderly hands. I am finally allowing myself to rest, accepting that my body is saying STOP! But this time, the rest doesn’t help. There IS no confusing cycle of exhaustion, rest, feeling temporarily ok again, exhaustion, rest, ok, repeat. There is just a constant heavy broken body that can’t seem to cope with anything, sunlight, baths, noise, chemicals, thinking, being upright.
Boy was I scared as it dawns on me what have I done.
Thankfully I was only like this for about a week before it started lifting inch by inch month by month. For some, it is more severe and lasts months, years. CFS can cause death. Isolating, only understood by those who have experienced it themselves. Even I couldn’t grasp what was wrong with my friend who had CFS for 5 years until I got this PVFS myself. “So what are your symptoms again? Or, so…why can’t you work?” I’d ask, time and time again, feeling blankly confused but curious. It never sunk in until now.

Now my catalyst was a dear friend. I didn’t want to be visited, I was embarrassed. I was pale and thinner but I still didn’t look sick, I looked alright. But she understood the experience of CFS and when she spoke these words to me, every cell in my body felt the full blown truth:

It is HARD
to admit
that

I

am

weak

Some kind of wall inside me broke and I was flooded with the pain of this deep truth I had been ignoring. Hearing it aloud from somebody else allowed me to accept. To release the denial, to see the truth that had evaded me, clouded by other peoples words and judgement, furthered by my own self-doubt. I now knew with certainty that every tiny whisper I’d heard but not heeded from my body was truth.
Listen to that whisper. Trust my body.

I had no idea how powerful my own self-doubt was, whittling away my health. People have no idea the effect of their frivolous words. To this day I can still find a hatred and resentment in my heart. God grant me forgiveness, dissolve this bitter anger, it is of no use.

In my time of physical weakness I discovered inner strength, the facing of denial, the uplifting of deceptions.