decisions – My Tape Story

{grateful} Believe it or not, I think she came into my life to help me move forward. I went to get here but I was called to get her — does that make sense? It does to me. I had plans of getting a protection dog here (service dog isn’t a thing in India yet) because I needed some peace of mind that I’ll be okay. The move from Singapore to India has been hard on me but that’s also not surprising. And then one day, I’m looking for kittens online with the name ‘Luna’ at the back of my mind.

The next day I find Luna, the day after I go and pick her up. She made me get out of the house and out of my mind. I went by car to get her (I can’t stand car rides) and I took her to the vet on my own when she was ill. It was my very first time stepping out on my own in India. First time ever. I’ve always been accompanied by someone or the other all my life (whenever in India) and here I was, with a kitten in my bag, travelling deep into a highly-overwhelming city looking for a vet I’ve never met before.

Nursing her back to health (doc said she was so weak we could’ve lost her) sort of took away the extra noise in my mind. The worry. The uncertainty. The fear around having moved to a new place. It didn’t vanish completely (I doubt it will for a while) but it faded away into the background. It made me pause and focus on what was important: my health and Luna’s recovery. I was just about starting to walk after being bedridden for 6 weeks so looking after myself while looking after her was rather difficult. But I knew it had to be done. We were meant to meet. Sometimes our intuition guides us in ways we don’t fully understand. It was subtle but clear for me that Luna and I were going to meet. I love her like my own child. And, looking after her has validated it for me that I do not want kids of my own. Of course, I do have a list of reasons why and deep down, I feel like that’s my truth. We’ll see how things go. Grateful to have met Luna. Waking up next to this face warms my heart 😍

When your joints freeze because it’s raining and it’s too cold to handle!

The cold gets to you – you like it but your body doesn’t. You want it to be cold outside because you’ve been dying in heat for a long time but your joints feel the chills deep inside. You’ve been dealing with migraines and the cold is sort of soothing, in some ways. But you joints hate it. They ache and hurt and feel heavy. They feel fragile. It’s horrible to have both these experiences simultaneously – on one hand you are sick of the humidity and stickiness and want to wear thinner, lighter clothes and on the other hand your joints need to be taken care of. Maybe you need a thick coat.

Not just that, it’s not so easy or straightforward – just wear more layers and get to work – nope. That’s not how it works. It’s more like this – you wear extra layers and sit in bed. Not even sit, you lie down in bed because your joints are literally cringing away and you can’t do anything. You may even need socks because the old grandma that lives inside of your body (sometimes I wonder if there is an old woman living inside of me. An old soul of some sort) wants her feet massaged and needs her socks on. She needs hot packs too – maybe even four at times.

So you wait in the bed till you feel good enough to get out and begin your day. Or you end up making yet another decision to listen to your body and stay in bed all day – if that’s what grandma wants. You listen to grandma. Because your brain doesn’t know any better at times.

Chronic illness messes with your brain on a daily basis. Chronic illness which causes you debilitating pain every minutes of the day literally screws around with your ability to rest your mind because you are just constantly making decisions. Some of these decisions may sound so freaking trivial to majority of the people but you can’t even imagine what it is like to spend your brain cells over “trivial” matters for your health and your body. Technically, you’d prefer to save these for “more important things in life”.

But even the little things matter so much to us.

If an average human being makes 4 “trivial” decisions per day and 0-1 bigger ones, we’re easily making about 50 “trivial” ones and 10 bigger ones on a daily basis. I’m not even exaggerating – maybe the ratio is even greater.

Point is, it is necessary to slow down. Especially because we are making so many decisions all the time. No body needs extra brain cells wasted. No one wants extra pain. You’d say, there are far more important things to worry about and to that I’d say no. There aren’t. I guess we don’t have the privilege – we really don’t. The most important thing to us ends up being our health. Overall health. We choose to give in to it because if we don’t, we’re asking for more suffering. These “trivial” and “insignificant” issues can cost us our health.

It’s frustrating at times but as you learn to grow (when I say this, I’m referring to the growth you experience as a person, the change you go through as you deal with the illness on a daily basis and the acceptance you start to develop) with your illness, you learn to become patient and treat your body like it needs to be treated. With love and respect, and extra kindness. Even if that means having to sweat in a fur coat to make your joints feel a little better.

Happy Weekend! And yes, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.

❤︎

Tag: decisions

{Baby Moon}

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”