Dragging in the New Year

I won't sugarcoat it-- last night was tough. For the past several weeks the Wegener's has been slowly waking up-- not enough to re-treat yet but enough to make my life increasingly difficult. The pain is back and building. The fatigue is increasing. On top of that, I've been sick with a cold that not only ran amok but sent out last-minute invitations to its bacterial buddies for a year-end party. You know how some plants completely wilt when they need watering? That's how I feel-- no reserves at all. Try as I might to stop the chemical cascade, the energy being siphoned by the physical is taking its toll on me emotionally. It's pure biochemistry. And even though I can describe the endocrine feedback loops, knowing that fire is hot doesn't keep it from burning you.

Still, I love our temple's New Year's Eve tradition and wanted to participate. It meant making a deal with the endocrine devil as it were-- pouring in caffeine all afternoon, aware that I'd feel like a truck hit me the next day for the adrenal stress it would cause. (Dealing with chronic illness is like Sophie's Choice every day. Which child do you favor, the body or the mind, and can you ever restore a sense of wholeness once you've chosen one over the other?)

Unfortunately, the caffeine was enough to keep me awake but not enough to jolt me into a celebratory mood. After discovering-- for the zillionth time-- that my favorite coping mechanism of muscling through was not going to work, I finally gave myself permission to surrender. Well, sort of. Complete surrender would have brought me joy. The partial surrender I embraced was just enough to put the brakes on my thoughts that said, "It's New Year's Eve, why aren't you happy?" Or worse, "There's something wrong with you."

But some surrender is better than nothing. It creates spaciousness in the mind that isn't there otherwise. It was in those moments that I found bits of peace-- where I felt carried by the merit of eons of practitioners accomplishing their practice, and where I remembered that nothing is permanent, especially not an emotional state. As much as I wish those moments would have stretched into the entire night, they didn't. It was a struggle even at the end. But it was one night that doesn't--no matter what the Hallmark commercials want us to think-- seal my fate for the coming year. I'm not the same person who rejoiced in last year's New Year's Eve celebration. I'm the one who thinks that's okay.