Outside of my check ups and hospitalizations, today, December 8, is the first time in over a year that I've willingly gone out of the house.
My relatives have been trying to convince me to go out for months, even just to visit our other relatives. But I refused every time because it was depressing to imagine myself at a beach or some other beautiful place in Ormoc and not be able to see or smell it . I would not even be able to smell the ocean breeze. I would just be haunted by having something so near yet so out of reach.
But I decided to come out for Nico's birthday because, if nothing else, I should at least show up for my nephew.
I've been here before. Recovery can be treacherous, burdening you with the knowledge that yes, you're alive, but you're not living. You miss everyone's birthdays, every gathering, every art and music event, every protest march.
But somehow, after every near-death experience, I still always find myself almost instinctively holding on to life, to faith in my own mental strength, to a "fall seven times, stand up eight "attitude, like it's just the next logical step in the process. It might be the problem solver in me But perhaps it's also all the art and music that I've absorbed over the years.
Even as a teenager, I've always gravitated towards art that portray the indomitable human spirit. Songs like Take Your Time Coming Home by fun., Ruby by Foster the People, Swim by Jack's Mannequin, and Unsinkable Ships by Meg and Dia. Books like Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly and City of Thieves by David Benioff, a book that remains my all-time favorite to this day.
And when I was organized into the mass movement, I learned to take strength from Marxist philosophy, particularly dialectical materialism, and from the different people in different marginalized communities that I've had the chance to work with and fight alongside.
I take strength from the knowledge that there is no greater endeavor than the struggle for genuine liberation, and, as unusual as it may sound, this has been instrumental in helping me accept my auto immune illness.(I swear I will write an essay about this soon.)
And I take the most strength from the fulfillment I feel with my relationships, my social support, my communities. It is a beautiful and wondrous thing to recognize how much our lives are intertwined with each other. I've realized recently that so much of the way I appreciate art and music is shaped by the people who enjoyed these pieces of media with me, sharing in the joy of it. I think, amid the hustle of life, it is easy to forget how much this togetherness seeps into our subconscious and informs our way of life.
I recently decided to get over my fear of reading books with disabled protagonists, but I found a happy medium in romance novels because one thing that a romance novel will guarantee is a happy or optimistic ending.
In one of these books, the female protagonist has autism and rheumatoid arthritis, which is coincidentally the same one I have, and she has a conversation with the male protagonist's father, who had to get a prosthetic leg because of a bad injury.
She asks him, "How are you?" and he responds with, "always healing."
This gave me much needed perspective because the bitter truth is that I would not have contracted that specific kind of meningitis, lost 3 of my senses including sight, and had to learn to walk again if I did not have lupus.
But instead of thinking, "I will never stop being angry about the lupus, "I will now make the effort to recognize that I am always healing.
Some days will be worse than others. But I can rest easy in my own tenacity for life, in my revolutionary optimism to Help build a world where peace is based on justice, My faith in the people who love and care for me, and the knowledge and certainty that I still have more tomorrows, that each sunrise is a chance to struggle bravely, proudly, and tenaciously.
