My Favorite Quotes for Surviving Severe ME.
"All that you touch you change.
All that you change changes you.
The only lasting truth is change."
-Parable of the Sower
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I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
-Fellowship Of The Ring
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"The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant."
-Doctor Who, Vincent & The Doctor
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"Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate."
-The Fault In Our Stars
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"The world is what it is. But the world is also what you bring to it, and who you share it with."
-Vlogbrothers
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"Well, That's the problem with life, right? Either you know what you want, and then you don't get what you want. Or you get what you want, and then you don't know what you want"
-BoJack Horseman
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“It can be very hard to accept how disappointing life is, Harper, because that’s what it is, and you have to accept it. With faith and time and hard work you reach a point where . . . where the disappointment doesn’t hurt as much, and then it gets easy to live with. Quite easy. Which . . . is in its own way a disappointment. But. There.”
-Angels In America
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"You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter."
-Handmaids Tale
"Laura! Clear out the rest of my day! I have to push a boulder up a hill and then have it roll over me time and time again with no regard for my well-being."
-BoJack Horseman
“I never imagined losing my mind was going to be such hard work.”
-Angels In America
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“We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”
-Angels In America
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I have always loved and saved quotes. I spend a lot of time trying to convey the dark reality that is life with severe ME, severe pain and severe illness. But I think sometimes quotes capture ineffable things that I have to acknowledge I will never be able to express. Things that every spoonie living with chronic pain knows but that we can rarely convey to others.
TW: Assisted Suicide
Life with chronic illness sucks. There is so much pain and suffering that we experience and its impossible to convey to a healthy person the burden that survival suddenly entails. Unimaginable pain and suffering is called unimaginable for a reason.
But there is also a bit of secret perspective from chronic illness. Post Traumatic Growth is one way it is sometimes expressed but I think the reality is less dramatic. It's the classic "you don't appreciate something until you can't have it." When we are so often denied basic pleasures like food, sunlight, fresh air, motion, human interaction and so much more we gain an appreciation for the beauty of these simple things.
This is the paradox of severe illness. With each thing it takes away it gives you a new level of gratitude for what is left.
I don't think this gratitude is all powerful. I know from personal experience that there is suffering no level of gratitude, personal growth, or appreciation for simplicity can balance.
There is suffering beyond what most people will ever be able to imagine and hopefully never will.
That's why I have plenty more posts to come. Why I will always support the right to self determination, dignified death and VAD. Why I will never tell someone that every life is worthwhile or that any life is meaningless.
But that doesn't mean that I don't see the pile of good things. It doesn't mean I don't wish everyone could see it as clearly as severe MECFS makes it to me each day. And it doesn't mean the good things aren't still good. No matter how much bad is thrown on top of them. These quotes help me live with that balance.
