The Cruelest Teacher

People often compliment me on qualities that I know were created and/or strengthened in me through pain. I am never quite sure how to react. I certainly enjoy being complimented (who doesn't?), but I never have anyhting to say in response. Because I feel like it, in this post I will list what I have learned the hard way, why I had to learn it, and possibly how I feel about it.

1. Patience: People are often incredulou sthat I can sit in one place for four or five hours, stay in the same house for a week, or watch my flight get delayed for two hours without going totally stir crazy. But if you have to sit in one place for hours, you learn not to mind it. I learned early on that fidgeting doesn't help anything and in fact usually results in me hurting myself. It is far easier simply to retreat into my own imagination and wait for time to pass.

2. Focus: I can shut off 80 percent of my thoughts and focus all my brain power on the remaining 20 percent at will. Studying takes me less time than it takes other people because of this ability to "hyperfocu. I achieve higher levels of concentration while praying by shutting off distracting thoughts. I can memorize songs very quickly just by sitting down and focusing. I'm pretty sure this "hyperfocusing" is a survival skill. Pain is extremely difficult to deal with if one cannot learn to focus off it.

3. Self-acceptance: It's hard to watch yourself walk slower and slower every day, than start using crutches, than move to a rollator. It's harder still to feel yourself losing your powers of memory and thought as you operate in a fog, and it's even harder to accept that you regularly forget how to walk, talk, or breathe. But hating yourself because you're not the person you used to be only serves to make you more stressed and tired, which exacerbates the slowness etc. It is necessart to be gentle, to tell yourself, "Come on. One more step. You can do it. Good girl," not, "You idiot! You walked this yesterday, so get moving!"
A person must work in partnership with his or her body. When your body says it's had enough of something, you stop. Period. You'll be healthier and happier that way. If my body says, "I can walk without the rollator, and I can clamber over things, and I can go to the gym and hang out," I say, "OK, great! Let's go!" and we do. If my body says, ""I need to sit down, on the cold wet ground, right this minute, and I'm going to be stuck there for the next ten minutes," I sit down and wait out the ten minutes: right there, on the cold wet ground.

4. Living in the Moment: How many of us live our lives regretting the past and/or worrying about the future? I certainly used to. Pain has taught me that that is pointless. When you're feeling good, it helps nothing to worry about when things will be bad again; nor is it productive to replay feeling bad. "I felt bad yesterday; I'll feel bad tomorrow; but today I'm feeling good" is reason enough to rejoice and throw oneself into living.

If I were not going to get better, these lessons would not compensate and I would still feel as though I were missing out on a lot. But now that I know I can be cured, I'm glad for the opportunity to have learned these lessons.