Life has resumed to something which resembles a steady day to day pace lately – and it’s blissful, I am so incredibly grateful for every moment, yet disconcerting and off step in a way which I’m not sure I will ever be able to articulate, all at the same time. I’m working a 9-5 job three days a week, yet I’m fed by a tube and a machine. I accompany my parents to parties, yet their conversations are filled with explaining why their hosts don’t need to offer me food and drink. I’ll “splurge” sometimes, but I pay for it in pain and vomiting many hours later, albeit now not generally to the extent that I need emergency medical attention. On the days that I do not work, I struggle to stay awake at all. Life is normal again, yet it’s not. My battles continued long after I left the hospital last summer, yet to the outside world, I appear to have been restored to full health. I love that function has been restored to my body, and that I can choose whether or not I wish to fight in secret or not, however, the secret that I often opt to keep is weighty, and I’m still working on finding my balance with it.
In the stillness following the disruption that has been the past few years, I finally have a chance to find the pieces of me that I didn’t realize I had lost, and discover some new ones. For the moment, that lies in the beauty that I now have enough energy to appreciate, and a desire to document it.
Sabina Catherine 