Today, I am feeling sorry for myself. I am having a down and dirty pity party, the likes of which you’ve never seen. I got Vertigo last week, last Wednesday after getting home from a very successful business trip. I’ve had vertigo before in the form of Meniere’s Disease. I had it for three years. It could be debilitating at times and wreaked havoc with my life. I say that with the utmost sarcasm because my life was a train wreck at the time. Anyway, this time I called it everything but vertigo. I blamed low blood sugar, lack of exercise, not eating blah blah blah. In the back of my mind I knew exactly what it was.
This is Memorial Day weekend. For a select few of us it is a time of more than remembering our war dead. Our lives were changed two years ago when a dear friend of ours was struck down with a stroke. He was bigger than life and now he is living a simple existence in a wheelchair, with limited speech and a full time aide. We love him and we are the keepers of his legacy.
His illness was the beginning of my journey back to life. Isn’t it so often true that when something horrible happens some good always comes from it? Today I am suffering terribly wishing that I could turn back the hands of time so that he would be himself again. I know neither I nor the others had anything to do with him falling ill but we all have a what if…
That is how I found out I had vertigo. Our administrative assistant kicks herself for not throwing him in the car and taking him to the doctor herself so she wasn’t letting me self diagnose. Oh no, that was not going to happen again. Off I went to the doctor and there it was…vertigo. Medication was dispensed and all would be right with the world in two to four weeks if you could stand the side effects of the medication. Sometimes the cure is definitely worse than the disease.
But you do know your own body and as soon as I heard vertigo I knew I was in trouble. I have become a believer in the law of attraction and I know everything happens for a reason. There are several schools of thought on disease but I think everyone now believes pretty strongly in a mind body connection. What would be the probable cause of vertigo? I avoided looking it up but finally I found out that it is scattered and fragmented thought and a refusal to look.
Look at what? Hadn’t I started a new life, moved, and adopted two new rescue dogs with all their issues? Hadn’t I just come home from the Cape, the place that rejuvenates me? Can you do all that without looking? Yes. You can.
What I hadn’t looked at was the series of events that had been my life for the previous twenty years. I hadn’t looked at the mental abuse, the loss, the mistakes, the turmoil, the lies, the years passing. I had grown old and not even noticed. I had grown fat and not realized what I was feeding. I had believed that I was getting what I deserved.
But then our friend got sick and we all woke up. We all started making changes. I separated from my husband of years, I moved, I bought all new furniture, I lost lbs, I went to work-out class but…I never mourned.
As grateful as I am for all those things, I never let the rest of the things go in a way that honored them and credited them with making me what I am today. I was so busy putting it all behind me that I didn’t stop to just look at it and feel it all the way to my core. People were so supportive but they were waiting for the other shoe to drop as it had to.
This memorial day I am mourning the war dead, the people in my life who have suffered, the people in my life who are gone, my youth and tomorrow I will be celebrating those same things.