Perspective

Sometimes you really have to stop and reflect on the past just to realize how far you've come.  Anyone who's ate with me or even had an extended conversation with me would know one thing about me.  I don't eat everything.  Most would remember varying degrees of gluten intolerance, lactose intolerance, or food allergies.  None would be completely correct, but close enough for me.  I don't usually relate my entire long boring story of illness and treatment to many people for a couple of reasons, 1. it's gross and 2. I don't really like to dwell on it.  When I tell people I don't eat this or that, they always react or over-react as the case may be with some sort of comment like, "How do you live!?!"  This has never bothered me though.  I usually just say, "I'd rather not eat those things and be healthy."  Maybe this is rude, but I figure if they can't imagine a diet without, say, strawberries, they certainly aren't going to understand the 5 + years of illness I went through (or sympathize with me).

Yesterday a friend remembered some mention of illness and gluten/food allergies in our past conversation and asked me about it as one of her friends is very ill.  She obviously is a terrific friend to seek out a random conversation from many years ago that we had.  It was a simple enough request and when I started writing her I realized just how much I had pushed the actual experience out of my life.  My life now is about living with these parameters I know I have and trying to enjoy everything that comes my way.  I gained so much wisdom from that experience that most people will never be able to.  Not that I wish my experiences on anyone but you learn so much about yourself, your body and what matters most when you have to struggle to make it through a day without knowing if you are ever going to feel alive again.  Very few people were let into my world at that time of my life.  Did I have many friends? Yes.  But only a handful knew how very sick I was.  I didn't then and still don't like to show any weakness, period.  So my family, my boyfriend, now husband, (lord only knows why he stuck around with me being as icky as I was) and a few friends saw me as sick as I really was.

As I was writing it dawned on me how everything in my life now is the antithesis of what it was then besides my family, my husband and my closest friends.  Then I was too trapped by being ill to try anything new, now I huger for it.  I was too blinded to really access my feelings and push for what I wanted or to push away what I didn't want.  I was floating in a sea of mediocrity.  The biggest factor in me getting well wasn't the food, although the diet change made it possible... It was me taking control of my life.  The day I cleaned the over 40 different tried prescriptions out my medicine cabinet was the day I started getting better.  And at that point I still didn't even know what was wrong with me.  I just knew that I wasn't going to sit around and be sick anymore.  So anyone who wants to know... ask me about my former illness.  I'll tell you about how I healed my body and my mind.  Perspective is a huge bonus in my life and I realized yesterday how much I value it.