Renew and Rejoice

Marathons are usually twenty-six miles long, but the one that recently has consumed my life is best measured by time than distance. If the past 365 days were a race for the survival of age 33, I just crossed an imaginary finish line as today, May 18th, is my 34th birthday.

Last year, my birthday week was ushered in during the midst of a beautiful whirlwind of activity: the end of a semester at school, shooting my friends' concerts, staying out until the streets welcomed the kind of golden silence that only happens in NYC at 3AM, celebrating my birthday with friends where I play platonic cupid and shoot arrows at will so that the amazing people I know can know each other and packing for my upcoming trip to Italy. My energy level, my vitality and the expansiveness I felt when I thought about my possibilities were seldom greater. Life, it seemed, had finally let me find it on my own terms.

Waking up in Venezia a few days later with the breeze dancing through the window that was slightly ajar and kissing my feet while church bells and Italian voices echoed in the distance was a taste of heaven. Visiting my brother and his family in his adopted home of Slovenia and seeing what a smart, beautiful child my niece is was a joy. Meeting with one of my friends from my early days in NYC while in Vienna and then, going to the former homes of Mozart and Freud all in one afternoon felt like life was as it should be. Trying to find a vegetarian meal in Munich was its own special adventure until I stumbled upon an amazing small restaurant where the chef was willing to cater to anything I needed. I have a special fondness for being in foreign countries where I do not speak the language. I like expanding my mind, my understanding of the world and frankly, for beating the odds. And, in so many ways, being able to travel to Europe for a second time was, in fact, proof that one can overcome much and still find a way to live and love life.

I did not know during that trip that I was about to get another opportunity to overcome obstacles, gigantic ones at that. As many are aware, my life drastically changed in a single instant yet again in August of 2009. After spending a day in the desert in southern CA (the creepy, horrible desert), I ate dinner at a Thai restaurant. Almost immediately after finishing the meal, things began to feel very wrong and half an hour later, I was in an ER in a small hospital in the middle of nowhere. In that room, I faced down death and again said, "No, not yet." The conviction that I had not finished my work was overwhelming and that, coupled with the look in the doctor's eyes, was enough to draw me back to the land of the living. But, in those moments, in addition to my soul changing, my body did as well.

Exactly what transpired that changed the internal landscape of my flesh remains a mystery. But, most of my doctors now agree that I was given doses of life-saving medications that were too great for my already-sensitive body. While I thought that I had escaped from the chains of Lyme disease that had held me for much of my life, the effects of carrying such chains do not release easily. And so, during my experience of a life-threatening allergic reaction, a new disorder emerged: dysautonomia. I will spare sharing the details at length, but the autonomic nervous system controls all of the things we don't think about, like heartrate, for example. Usually, the two parts, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, work together in harmony and one goes about his or her day none the wiser. But, when something goes wrong with it, you begin to have encounters with doctors like I've had in which they sit and stare at you like a deer caught in headlights when you ask how to get well from such a thing.

It has been nine months now and peace has been elusive and no longer is a companion to my being. Ironically, I've had to make peace with living without it. There has not been one single day in which I have not felt like my time here might very well be far shorter than I thought. I know the feeling of death in tangible ways and my body reminds me of echoes of that-- physically-- daily. So, to welcome another birthday is not just a chance to have cake that I probably couldn't safely eat anyway, but it is a triumph.

When I was a few years more naive, around my birthday I would choose a word to practice living for the next year. Words like bravery, strength or last year's-- equanimity-- would color how I chose to move through the world. I did not realize how key cultivating equanimity would be when I selected that word last year. I just thought it sounded cool.

Now, on my 34th birthday, it is time to choose a new word and I am torn. Health is the first that comes to mind, but others rival it. Grace. Hope. Patience. These seem even more crucial to my life. It is excruciating to live without health, to be locked into a body that does not do as it should or as you wish. And, it would be inaccurate to say that I do not feel terribly imprisoned by what my life has become or to say that I do not grieve for that which I have lost. But, it seems a worse fate to live without hope. Or, to face something like this without an element of patience, content-- even if only a tiny bit-- in the knowledge that everything changes. I have endeavored to face this challenge with grace. I don't believe that I have always been able to maintain this, especially when I am being separated from so much of what I love or when I edge closer to greater and greater losses, like that of my home. But, I remind myself that this is just a moment in time. A tiny, little moment in all of a great, big, majestic universe.

So, I seek the gifts at my feet-- they are ever present. I do not pretend to know if there are reasons for experiences, though I like to think there are and try live as if there are if purely for experience's sake, but I am trying to let my life be enriched by whatever comes. A year ago, I only knew of starvation in abstract terms, but now due to my severe food allergies, I know what hunger, deep hunger feels like in my own body. I understand what many people in our world suffer on a daily basis, but in different ways. One can't help but be changed when suffering is no longer abstract, but tangible.

On the brighter side, if there was one thing I have done right in my life, it is in selecting my friends. There has been such an outpouring of love and support from so many people during the past nine months that my gratitude feels inadequate when measured against it. And, I would be remiss not to mention that the strength of my parents aids me every day.

As I begin the journey of age 34, I stand before it with a simple truth: each day is the unknown. I don't know what this next year or even this next hour might bring. But, I make a single promise to you, to me and to the world. Whether I possess health or not, I will offer the best of what I have to give: my love, my words and the beauty I see all around us. Living this vow is my own little celebration of the life I have and so my words to live this year, come what may, are: renew and rejoice.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes