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The warm smells of an early summer night breezed through my windows in harmony with Bonobo’s 2012 Boiler Room Set.
Sweet, nu-jazz beats blasting from my Volkswagen speakers as I drove into the sunset towards Jamestown beach. Looking to park and noticing all the cars around, the voice inside me spoke:
“Not here. There are too many people here.”
I exited back to the parkway and drove with no destination. Midway to nowhere, it hit me. All the sadness and frustration from six years of Crohn’s disease gripping me like an unrevealed truth I had hidden from myself. I started wailing.
Now flying down the parkway, I punched the volume knob on the center console and the DJ’s smooth vibes went silent. Screaming at the top of my lungs, the tears rolling into my beard. I felt a tingling sensation that I had never felt before. My entire face warm with thousands of little pin like vibrations. Like an acupuncturist was drawing out the sadness and frustration bottled inside.
I screamed and yelled in utter hopelessness at the top of my lungs. Angry, so angry and exhausted.
“I can’t live life like this anymore! Life is not worth living like this anymore!”
The constant pain impeded on the simple joys of life. Unable to eat food, too sick to hang out with friends, battered and beaten.
Crohn’s made me feel like a prisoner in my own body.
It was the darkest moment of my life. Never had I been in such despair, never had I inhabited such dark places. Suicide was not a thought or possibility until that night. The sheer disparity: I didn’t see the point in living life if that was the life I had to live.
“If I crashed off the highway right now it would be better than living a life of endless pain”
“If I can’t enjoy food, if I can’t enjoy my friends, if I can’t be active, I can’t walk without keeling over and bringing myself to my knees…what’s the point?”
Where is the remaining joy in life? Why live a life where I can’t nourish my body, where I can’t have sex, where I can’t play sports, where I can’t sit with my own thoughts uninterrupted by pain, sit and relax without pain, lay in the grass and feel the warm sun without pain.
In an instant everything shut off. The emotional exorcism was over and feeling returned to my face. At the end of this cathartic experience, I felt a calm, crystal clear understanding. This pain would lead to a change. I knew at that moment, that this was the catalyst. This would be the low point in my battle with Crohn’s for my health. It was time for massive change. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t need to, but something would change. It had to.
I was ready to lean into my disease.
I had reached the low in my battle with Crohn’s. I felt deep down that this was the turning point and I made a commitment to myself to find a way, somehow. I finished the short drive home, crawled into bed, and fell immediately to sleep.
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This post was previously published on ByRSlf.co and is republished here with permission from the author.
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