Ramble On

Life can be hard, everyone that has lived long enough can attest to that. Every single person on this Earth has endured something that has changed them for better or for worse and molded them into the person they are today. This thing that changes people can be something wonderful. A dream job opportunity, money, a family, what have you. The flip side could also be something horrible. A lost loved one or in my case that of my personal health failing me. I’ve always had struggles with my health due to a variety of autoimmune diseases that I have had ranging from psoriasis, a condition in which skin cells build up and form itchy dry patches, to Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s took a big hit from my time in high school as I lost a lot of weight and felt like a shell of myself. It largely affected my confidence, even a bit still to this day. The real hit came later, after I learned to live with Crohn’s disease and psoriasis. The two would be well maintained even allowing me to live a semblance of a normal life for a time, however, it didn’t last. In the winter of 2013, everything changed.

It didn’t happen all at once like a horrible accident. Instead it was gradual. At the time, I had been working for a few years as a grocery clerk at the nearby Giant Food. Most of the time we were understaffed and because I was a hard worker that had no problem taking extra shifts, having just come out of college mind you, but slowly but surely I started to notice that my gait had changed. I barely could put any weight at all on my left knee. Up to that point in my life I had some minor issues with my knee as well so I figured it was some arthritis issues or just the usual aches and pains that came with it come winter time. A closer inspection revealed that my legs had developed a weird rash and my knee had swollen up horribly. I was quickly rushed to the hospital and it was obvious that the matter at hand was rather serious. There was a belief that my knee had become septic and needed to be operated on in order to cut out the dead tissue, effectively a knee replacement of sorts. At the time I was more or less still a child having a rather large surgery, I had gone from being the most active I had ever been in my life to a cripple in the matter of a month.

After the surgery I had to endure months, years even of rehabilitation in hopes of potentially being so called normal again. I couldn’t bend my knee much at all after the surgery and eventually I needed another to relieve pressure inside of it. Slowly over the time of me being bounced between being told to be bed bound, different kinds of rehab or medicines, I noticed people that I thought were my closest friends started to drift away. Even beyond just my friends, my brother even began to become a bit aggressive to me and my mother. On one hand, it made me question if something was wrong with me but deep down I knew better. I kept taking all the hits to my chin and kept rolling with the punches as I knew in my heart eventually something would break. Hopefully not figuratively of course, but I knew that it couldn’t all be bad. As my doctors continued to cycle through different treatments to help my out of control arthritis after the two surgeries, my body would then tip out of control in response to the medications. My Crohn’s disease would flare up, my psoriasis would flare up as would the arthritis. It was and will forever be a messy balance.

That time was the roughest period of my life. The unknown of it all while also seeing people I believed were close to me drift away was a hard pillow to swallow. I began to believe my life would just be sitting around at home all day every day, and for the most part it has been for the better part of all my years from 2014 till even now. I never lost hope in the fact that eventually everything would be okay. Everyone has a journey that is specific to themselves and this was a part of my journey that would mold me into the person I am today. It is something I wouldn't change for the world either. This time taught me to enjoy the good moments in life more than anything and that the bad moments are temporary. If anything, those bad moments in someone's memory are often ones that drift into the memory bank becoming white noise in comparison to the good moments. It also taught me, or better yet, showed me those that are truly the people that matter in my life. My mom never left my side through every hospitalization and always managed to make even the most bleak of situations somehow positive. My closest friends would manage to distract me from the bad and help make memories that trump the bad. They have managed to still be my closest friends to this day. They’d visit me in the hospital whenever I’d have another admission over the years and bring joy to an otherwise rather dour situation effortlessly even if it ate away at them a bit and their days. It’s something I will never forget and will always admire them for.

From that initial moment after a grueling surgery, realizing my life had been altered greatly. I laid in that hospital bed looking down at what used to be my knee and saw something much larger and replaced by something that was black and purplish. It was grotesque. It was hideous. I kicked and screamed and cried for a time. Everyone is allowed those moments but I picked myself up as I do everytime. It is weird to say this but I am thankful for it all. Without this plight, without that health struggle, I don’t think I would be the person I am today. I love the person I am today so I wouldn’t change a thing. I have my baggage as does everyone else and I know going forward it’ll be a constant struggle with my health but I wouldn’t change any of it. Who is to say that if I didn’t go through these tribulations that I would be the same person? Maybe I would have ended up more like my abusive brother? Maybe I would have been the scourge of the Earth with no real long lasting friends. I am thankful for my plight. I am thankful for being unequivocally me. That moment will be synonymous with me until the end of my days, some of that fear I endured still creeps up in me to this day but the good memories that came from always outshine that fear and anxiety. Again, life can be hard but it is truly about the people closest to you. They are the ones that will lift you up when you are down. They’ll love you unconditionally. They’ll be there. Those memories that you create with them can outshine the darkest of days and that is just what they have done for me and shown me that life is something to be cherished, and those relationships as well.

The winter of 2013 changed me forever for the better and taught me invaluable lessons that I most likely wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere. I realized that a lot of ideals that people in their early to mid twenties often chase in the grand scheme of things do not matter at all. I wasn’t going to chase after girls like a belligerent buffoon. I wasn’t going to worry or dread work. I wasn’t going to do a lot of things that I thought were so important. It is a never ending battle with chronic pain that deals heavily with a lot of heavy duty maintenance to make sure I don’t slip into a pit of despair that is increasingly difficult to climb back out of. Instead all of those unimportant worries shifted to my well being and taking life day by day. It taught me to enjoy everything as it was a borderline miracle that I am still standing here today to write this very piece. It’s a miracle I am even breathing. I won’t waste it nor take any of it for granted. Nor would I take for granted the people closest to me.