For the Love of Words: Fragile

I am learning to love myself through words.
I've loved words since I found my free will, and have since wielded them to reaffirm, confront, comprehend, or escape my emotions; yet I've yet to seek self-love through their hums and vibrations.

I recently received a package.  It contained a beautiful mug made by Allison Fretheim Ceramics.  I found her work via a witchy subscription box, another effort to reconnect with myself and beliefs.  I missed my first opportunity to own a piece of her art, but waited for the next series, and collected my handmade vessel.  It has moons, and dots as constellations surrounding it.  It will hold all my "potions" and potions, and each sip from it will help me find me.

I mention it, however, not just to share a beautiful piece of art, nor my love of the moon and all things celestial, but because of the box it came in.  You see, she puts care into all that she assembles, even the packaging.  The mug was snug and even wrapped with twine and flowers, like something only fitting of Amélie.  My name was written on the box, and the sides were stamped with a moon...and the word "fragile."

Fragile.

I have stared at this word for the last week.  I couldn't bring myself to toss the box in with the rest of my recycling.  There was something about the word...

I am fragile.  My joints ache and degrade like an elderly person.  Most of my body attacks itself and my remedy is to kill my white blood cells, which reversely makes it easier for me to get and stay sick.  I should've died when I was twelve.  Every day since has been sustained solely by modern medicine and my stubborn tenacity to live.  I know that I am strong; a word I once hated because it mostly means endurance...yet I've learned to wear "strong" as a badge of honor...but fragile...

Fragile I've seen as weak.  My sensitivity I've learned as a flaw.  The hardest part being that it wasn't a choice.  Fragile is a state.  This mug, my joints, even my emotions, are fragile by nature; but what I've realized this week, staring at this stamped word, is that their fragility doesn't make them any less powerful.

This mug may be fragile, but it literally helps nourish me.  It makes me feel connected, even just to those who have seen and admire the art sculpted into it.
Being fragile is not something I need to feel ashamed of.   It may limit me physically, but it doesn't diminish who I am and the light I wish to bring to this world.

Just as this mug, with its unique grooves and textures wouldn't compare if were it made of plastic or something more durable, I wouldn't be me without that which makes me fragile.  It doesn't make me weak, nor inadequate.  It is just part of my reflection.  And just as when I look into the mirror and I see my curly hair or how my smile touches my eyes, I will see this word and remember that it is a trait of the self that I love.

[the mug, the flowers and the word]

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. 

 

Update on My Life