The Only Time I've Used Geometry

So I was in the hospital for two days this week, which is actually the shortest hospital stay I've ever had. Usually I end up there when my intestines become so inflamed that they stop working, and it usually takes a week, sometimes two, to get them back on track (pun intended).

This time, it was just a stomach bug, which causes inflammation in healthier bodies, escalating in mine like a vat of gasoline embracing a match. 

I've dealt with vomit and weird bowel movements for as long as I can remember, so that I can handle....it was the pain that sent me to the ER. Understandably I have a pretty high pain tolerance; most of the time I don't even feel it and can only tell that I'm in pain when I realize that I've turned irrationally irritable or emotional.  So for me to feel so much pain that I can't sleep.....usually means it's severe. 

In this case, "not as bad as it could've been" was the medical consensus. They still found a few things that have made a few of my friends gasp, but apparently that's not too much of a concern when it comes my body. 

***

It's funny. I've had this disease for almost two decades now, and have faced a wide range of emotions regarding others who get sick. For instance, I have a few close friends with bad cases of Celiac Disease, and I'm genuinely jealous, because their bodies can actually heal themselves, whereas mine eventually requires surgery to have the most diseased pieces of me removed. 

And then there are others who've had one medical difficulty, perhaps similar to the "non-concerns" the doctors found in my body this week, and it's their backstory. It's the story they tell on a first date, the defining moment of who they are, something shared as casually as their sign but with the same sock value as what's recently been in our news. 

And it's hard to even associate with people who revere their quick dashes of bad health, when medically I should be able to empathize. But my conditions are finite; hopeless, without cure or resolve; something that will live with me until the day I die, and perhaps even continue in my spawn should I choose to prolong this.

But unlike those who immortalize their medical records, I have chosen a legacy beyond this. 

For them, 

I've learned to repeat to myself that "everyone right now is facing the worst thing they've ever faced."  

Like similar triangles, the size of the situation is irrelevant because the angle from which we face our circumstance is the same. 

And for myself,

I have decided to change my other angles. 

I see them as my outlook, and what I can achieve in spite of the cards I was dealt.

I took a hard situation and polished and sanded it down, smoothing it into something beautiful. 

And the ability to do so is my skill. My backstory. My defining characteristic.  

To be given chaos and still move closer to the equilibrium of the equilateral, to bring myself perpetually closer to the life I want. 

And maybe just maybe, this is a skill that I can inspire in those around me that they can share with those around them, and collectively we can scrap and sand down this Trump polish our country back towards equilibrium and peace.