Steady In An Unsteady Hand

Steady in an unsteady hand

Hands shaking, mind racing, head spinning, heart beating and lungs heaving. Recovering from a seizure is exhausting. Yet it has become such a norm that to believe any different is as insane as how it all began. Yet that is a different story. Seizures are only part of what is wrong with me, still doctors don’t know much.

So I try not to focus on my problems, for they only make me scared.

Do you know what the opposite of fear is?

Please don’t say courage. Yes, this world is full of opposites but not the ones we tend to say. Up and down, left and right, day and night, dark and light. Those are all the true opposites. Yet, the opposite of pain is not health but rejoicing, the opposite of anger is not pleasure but forgiveness, the opposite of fear is not courage but excitement.

Opposites are where one exist the other can not. Light and dark can not be in the same space one will dispel the other. Just as fear and excitement can not be in the same space in you. If you are afraid you can not be excited.

So although I am sick I exist in the opposite. I do not focus on my pain but instead on rejoicing for all the good I have. I know I sound like I am trying to be some poster child. I promise I’m not. I just don’t like to dwell on how sick I am because then my pain feels more intense and I make others sad as well. So I choose to live in rejoicing. Gratitude for all the ones who help me, all the ones who love me, and all the ones who choose to make fun of me. Yes, I know that one sounds weird but it’s true.

You see I hide my pain because I ignore it. I taught myself how to walk with out a limp so no one would ask. I taught my self how to not be ticklish by simply not reacting. I taught myself how to get out of bed and go to work and school even though I have had a bad migraine for the past 8 years. Since I hide my pain it is easy to pretend that all is well when someone is mean to me and doesn’t know I am sick I can be grateful for them not faking or hiding what they think just because I am sick. I know sometimes others do.

So why do I bring this all up? Well to understand what it means to me to be able to do calligraphy you have to understand how it steadies my unsteady hand.

I got into calligraphy the same year I got sick, that is always sick. I saw it in the tv show Murlin and since then had this great idea of writing letters in calligraphy to my family. Something different and special. A love letter to my sister who lives over 1000 miles away. A letter of encouragement to a friend with depression. A letter of solace for a neighbor who has lost a loved one. Or even a love letter to myself to remind myself that I am worth my own love.

So since I was 15 I wrote such letters and my love for calligraphy grew. I do so many crafts but calligraphy is what steadies my hand. How? Well you see if I do any of the other crafts people know. They see me working on it or they just understand that I did it when they get it. When I write a letter only those who read what I write might have a clue that it was from me.

When I worked at a resort by the Grand Canyon when I was 18 I had made a friend and together we would watch and think about our coworkers and when we saw them feeling bad or sad or lonely we would write to them. We never used our names and no one ever figured out it was us. Except our boss who we told and she gave us candy bars to give with the letters.

I never wanted my words to belong to me so I never signed those letters and neither did the other girl. We simply would write them in the forest so no one would see us. We would talk and think about each one of these staff each and every day. Naturally tension would arise sometimes between us and our coworkers and by writing these letters all my tension went away and I could see them as who they are and not as the one who hurt me.

How this is relevant is that I still write these letters and only my family know anything about my calligraphy so when others receive their letters they never know it was me.

On the days when I am to sick to lift my head I long to pick up my quill and ink to write. I always decorate it with some paper that I cut into shapes that mean something. Like cutting out a koala bear for my friend who is obsessed with them.

After my seizures end and I can once again sit up I go to my desk and start my calligraphy. At first it is a mess so it’s on scrapes of paper but as I recover my head becomes steadier and as I focus on each stroke I make I focus less on how unsteady my hand is. Thus, allowing my hand to become steadier. Although I am still tired even a few letters in the elegance of calligraphy allows me to not hold on to the anxiety but onto the freedom of another world that calligraphy is.

Not just an moment of freedom. This is how I connect with my uncle.

My Uncle was never good at sharing how he felt or even knowing it. He couldn’t express his love in words or touch or service or gifts. His love was secret. When anyone he loved was interested in something he would do all he could to learn about it. He had several textbooks on mechanical engineering because that is what my brother was studying in school. He had boxes of fidget spinners because it is what my autistic cousin loved, and it helped her. He would do this because it was a connection he could make. By learning about these things, he had something he could talk to us about.

When I told him about getting calligraphy pens for Christmas on year he went out and got books and pens and started learning calligraphy. Therefore when I do anything in my calligraphy I feel connected to him. He would decorate with shapes. So now when I get out my calligraphy I also get out a pair of scissors.

Although it wasn’t until after he died that we found that he had done this. Spending a $1000 on a guitar because my brother was learning how to play or reading all he could in relation to horses for my sister. We found these things only when he left them to us in his death.

So I keep on steading my unsteady hand as I steady my heart with his memory, with calligraphy.