The 6th Anniversary Of My Big Crash

Today has been (and still is as I type this) a weird day for me. For someone who is usually quite attuned to her emotions, I haven't been able to pinpoint how I feecl today. And even weirder than that? I am at a loss of words. I just don't know how I feel, what I think, or where my words have gone.

I'm looking at this picture of me (at the start of this blog post) and feel disconnected to the emotion displayed on my face. This photo was taken by my two year old nephew while we were FaceTiming this morning. He took a screenshot during our call and my sister found it on her phone afterwards. I'm smiling because this little boy, this little heart of mine, fills me with joy and I smile every time that I see him and talk to him.

But once that call was over, the joy left. The smile disappeared. And I found myself in this space of...unfeeling...numbness...that has continued for the rest of the day. Perhaps because there are so many conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling around under the surface that they're obscurring each other and making it difficult for me to discern what is what.

It's a weird day. The last several days of January are significant because it's when my Big Crash happened. January 26, 2014 was the day my Central Nervous System and body fully crashed, went haywire, shut down, called it quits, and ended life as I'd known it.

Now, I'm at the end of six years of full-time chronic illness that has kept me imprisoned in many ways and set me free in many others. As complex as this chronic disease is, the experience, its impact, and what has come from living with it for so many years is far more complex. It's hard to articulate. It's painful too.

It also signifies stepping into year seven. Seven. That lands heavy on my heart. In this moment, I don't know how to process this. Seven years sounds like a long time.

In this past week, I've been flipping through the pages of these notebooks. Like a puzzle, with many missing pieces, the words inconsistently scribbled on these pages capture snapshots of this long journey with chronic illness. These pages are filled with pain and suffering, lessons and light, confusion and despair, determination and resilience. I wish I had written more. I wish there weren't such large gaps. I wish brain fog hadn't stolen my words and fatigue hadn't robbed me of the ability to write during so many periods throughout those years. I wish I'd known what I was thinking and feeling and doing on each of the anniversaries of my Big Crash.

I'm not going to force the words today. I'm not going to try to write down what this particular anniversary means to me just yet. When I tune in, I can sense that my words are blocked because I'm not ready.

I'm not ready because I need more time to process. And I feel the float tent calling to me. Maybe, once I'm in there, once I've surrendered my body to the warm water, the darkness, and the silence, maybe then the words will come to me. Maybe then I'll uncover how I feel and what I think.

But before I go, I want to share some of the words that I found while digging through these journals. It's an excerpt from the journal entry that was written on the very first anniversary of my Big Crash.

I'm grateful to have it to look back on but it's still a complicated experience, full of conflicting emotions, because of how unpredictable and changeable Central Sensitization makes life. This entry captures how I was feeling just on that day. But I know that in the in between, there were periods of deep darkness and incapacitation.

I sound so strong and positive in this particular entry. A stark contrast to how I feel right now. I have to remind myself that it was written after only one year of illness. Years and years of incessant symptoms, health setbacks, and suffering continued to wear at me for years after that so it's understandable that my mindset has taken big hits over time.

And while I know that I have come so far since then and have many victories to celebrate, maybe, in this moment, the weight of six full years of unceasing illness and the immense amount of willpower it's taken to navigate and survive them is bearing down on me.

I do know this: I feel depleted right now. I think maybe, under the numbness, is a sea of grief and sadness that I'm afraid to tap into and unleash. So enough of me and today for now. Let's look back:

January 29, 2015 | Jericho Beach | Vancouver

"I am alive. I am here. And I am alive. Last year, around this time but actually a few weeks into February, I admittedly had my doubts as to whether or not I would be here right now. Whether or not I would be here, alive.

I remember the horror of what it was like to be trapped in my failing body. The pain, the unending and unsurmountable pain that ripped through me, shredding my body and mind until I couldn't recognize myself.

I remember the feeling of my skin being inflamed with surges of itchiness, as if I'd been bitten by a hundred thousand mosquitos. I remember tearing frantically at my skin and scalp. I remember begging Peter to help scratch me everywhere but still there was no relief. And then I remember the feeling of losing my mind because my body wouldn't stop screaming at me, shrill and desperate and confused by a cacophony of mixed signals, all of them being torturous. And in those moments, I remember begging for the sweet release and sanctuary of death. I just couldn't take it anymore.

Only I did have to take it, for months and months because killing myself was not an option. You don't just find someone like Peter and punish him by caving to the unthinkable and leaving him alone.

And so I had to settle for being a mere shadow of the person I once was: weakened and left lifeless and purposeless by unthinkable fatigue and crippling pain. I was the person who couldn't brush her teeth and the one that needed to be lifted up from the bathtub floor because I didn't have anything left in me. That's what I was: depleted.

But depleted and defeated isn't who I am anymore. Today, on January 29th 2015 I feel whole. I feel at peace. I feel gratitude. And I very much feel alive. I can feel the crisp, cool air chill my exposed skin and flood my lungs - that can now breathe deeply for the first time thanks to Trigger Point Injection Therapy. I can drink in the beauty of this perfect, sunny, blue-sky winter day and feel the gratitude of being alive. I drove myself here. My own legs carried me across the sand. Those are victories I didn't think I would have again.

Now, I even dare to close my eyes and envision myself running through the UBC trails again. Maybe that will happen some day! (2020 me finds this very painful to read)

I had thought that my one year anniversary marking the day when Central Sensitivity Syndrome took over my life and made me hit rock bottom would fill me with anger and remorse. It is such a sweet surprise that I feel none of those poisonous things. (and then in the journal entry, I go into listing many things I'm grateful for that I won't list here)

I am not the same person I was a year ago. In a way, today is my funeral - it marks my readiness to lay to rest the old Christina. There is not much from that person that I want to hold onto; there is a lot I am happy to say my goodbyes to. I believe that I died and was given a chance at rebirth. This second life is a gift that has been given to me. It is a gift that I do not want to waste. Though I do not quite know the new parameters of this new path that I am on, I know in my heart that I am finally on the right path.

It is a path unique to me, filled with much uncertainty, but still it is the one I am meant to be on. I have to respect this gift of a new life and so I am committed to giving myself all the time necessary to fully heal and slowly discern where I am meant to go next.

I am proud of me because I am a survivor and now I know what it is to feel gratitude and happiness in the small blessings.

I am victorious.

I am here.

And I am here to stay."