Cycle of Rejection & acceptance

Hello everyone it’s me again. I’m here to explain to you my cycle of rejecting and accepting having a chronic illness. I hope this reaches a lot of people. And anyone who started out feeling the way I did Starts to find their own form of acceptance ..One of the largest changes in my life came when I started stopped seeing my body as the adversary. I stopped fighting my body and started taking care of it   It was the first step towards a lifetime of self acceptance. Everyone deserves to go down that roadWhen I was first diagnosed with a chronic illness my world imploded. At 21 years old I was told that the pain I was in and the often debilitating symptoms I had would never go away. That there was no cure and the best I could hope for was “symptom management & Acceptance will always be the hardest part of it all. I started rejecting the fact that I’m sick and I’m sure you all have felt this way too. Especially when your symptoms don’t happen all the time you start to think.. well maybe I’m better now. But you know that’s not true. The constant medical visits start to really be a eye opener for you. You start to think that this is real and this is my life now. I’m chronically sick I can’t wake up and take a shower without passing out I’ve got 4 new pills I’m taking plus vitamins. It’s starts to sound crazy. And almost unrealistic. And that’s when rejection starts to sit in. You look at your self and your age and think that there’s no way I can possibly be this sick. But you are Rejecting the fact that you now suffer from a chronic illness . And for me it will forever be something I struggle with as a human being. My life has changed drastically  I went from running 5k’s and 7 miles a day to not even being able to take a flight of stairs without being out of breathe and or passing out. I’m 22 years old and I’m not entirely sure how to cope with the fact that I be have this incurable illness. That my life has been put on hold while doctors try and figure a way to make sure I’m okay.  I’ve went from only going to the doctors twice a year to 4 times a month sometimes twice a week. I’ve contemplated quitting my job because I no longer can work 8 hours a day on my feet as a waitress. And it’s hard I’m part of this large population that is suffering from life threatening to non life threatening diseases and illnesses that I’d never in a million years believe I’d be apart of. But that’s the thing! With the rejection and the depression I’ve found those who are suffering with Similar if not same symptoms as me as well as the same illness and I’m think my goodness I’m not alone. In this at all Someone  ,somewhere is going through this just the same as me and it starts to get easier. I’m now apart of what we call a “Spoonie Community” it’s small and ever growing and it’s the most amazing community to be apart of everyone is understanding and caring and knows what I’m going through they make validating my illness so much easier. When doctors just discredit everything I say and it makes it easier to accept what I’m going through. It took a long time to accept that my life was going to have to be different to how I’d planned.   It took an even longer time for me to find myself again. To stop seeing myself as just the “sick girl”.  I realised that I’m not weak. I am strong, and whilst I need help with some things I can still have some independence. I am still me. My illness is just one aspect of my life, I am so much more than just the “sick girl”.  I’m a daughter, a younger sister, a fighter …the list goes on. Yes I am ill. But no, that’s not all there is to me.  There’s still times when my illnesses both physical and mental threaten to swallow me up, and those times are difficult. But those times come and go. They’re not forever.  If you feel like you’ve lost yourself to your illness, don’t be scared, you’re still in there somewhere sometimes it just takes a long time to find yourself again under the rubble. But you will do eventually, and you’ll dust yourself off. You’ll heal, not from your illness maybe, but from the blows it dealt to your identity.   You’ll rebuild the house which is you, and what a beautiful house it will be. I’m hoping that anyone suffering can begin to accept what they are going through. It will make it easier and the stress will lessen some. I promise you this. If your not apart of the Spoonie community take some time to get on Twitter or tumblr and look it up! I promise you It’ll help.🌻🥄

Sending much love from Alyx Louise SpoonFullOfSalt@wordpress.comSpoonsNSalt@twitter.com