This is for all who dare to hope. Not once. Not twice. But time and time again, when dreams have been dashed and the world has told you repeatedly, "This can't be yours." Maybe you believed it for a while. Maybe you still do. I know I did. Bitterness, pain, sadness, and defeat took the place of hope. I'd go through cycles of uber positivity over potential options (in my case various health treatments), give it my all, and dream for the day my body and life would be my own. I always found myself back at despair, but I also always returned to hope.
Sometimes hope means finding a new dream and adjusting original aspirations. That's the place I've lived in. "Maybe I'll never be able to do this, but I can do that, and that still brings me joy." This can still be a good place, although it is hard not to always be looking over the fence at what could be, or what might have been.
Yesterday I received confirmation following surgery that I did indeed have adenomyosis as well as even more endometriosis than had originally been reported. Hearing this had me grinning ear-to-ear. Even when it is there, often adeno isn't found during pathology, so I'm one of the lucky ones to get validation. It had not been all in my head (as so many with these illnesses are often told)...for more than 20 years I wasn't crazy and my pain had been very real. With a hysterectomy my adeno is forever gone. With excision, endo has hopefully been treated, but the recurrence rate for my particular condition is 30%. I've lived the storm. I know that dark and unrelenting place, the isolation and fierce cruelty. Even now, knowing a new storm could potentially be stalking my heals, I've rediscovered hope that I haven't known in more than a decade. I could cycle though so many questions: Will it come back? Will I need more surgery? Will I have to endure that pain again? Will the damage that's been done heal? Will I recover to a level of better fuction? Or will my remaining illnesses continue on even now?
I could go there, and to some degree I have, but I am trying instead to choose hope over fear. The question then is this: Knowing the pain, can you still know hope? Can you find the singing bird on the cusp of the storm? Poem: "Mocking Lightening"
