This Too Shall Pass

Lately life, has been a big struggle.  I'm barely keeping my head above water.  I'm barely functioning at times.  Between the headaches, the pain, and the exhaustion, it is all I can do to keep going.  I keep trudging on, but it truly feels like I'm walking in a foot of mud.

This reminds me of the summer days I worked in the corn and bean fields of Iowa.  During those months, we walked beans taking out volunteer corn and weeds that was growing.  It meant that you would walk each row of soybeans with a hoe or machete and whack out the unwanted plants.  If you were detassling corn, you were pulling the tassels on the female rows to get the proper pollination.

Generally the weather was hot and dry, but at times it would rain.  When it rained, it meant walking through the muddy fields or maybe more like trudging through the muddy fields.  You could not wait for the fields to dry or it to stop raining, because there was a short window of time in there to get this work done.  So as you walked through the field, your shoes would pick up pounds and pounds of mud.  The ground was uneven and so it became exhausting and challenging with each step you took.


In addition to the headaches and pain I feel in my body at this moment, the exhaustion feels similar to trudging through the muddy fields.  It is as if I don't have enough physical energy to keep moving.  It feels like I'm going to collapse at every step I take.

Some days I really just want to cry but I've not got enough tears to shed for how I feel.  Some days I just want to scream, but my voice only becomes hoarse.  Some days I am overcome with frustration only to realize the frustration is like a lonely voice screaming into the wind.

The pain gets intense.  It feels almost like someone is taking a board full of nails and slapping my body and my back.  It feels like just to breathe at times, the muscles surrounding my lungs have become so heavy that each breath is like lifting weights at the gym.

I know that exhaustion and stress have overtaken my body.  I know I should have found a way to stop it many weeks ago.  Yet, I'm not sure how I would have done that.  Life has thrown so much at me that I lost all control of what my days were.  It is beyond difficult to keep up when the waves of life continuously crash into you.

There are moments in all of this that remind me of the days leading up to the paralysis I went through in Conversion Disorder.  This is frightening in itself.  It is scary beyond belief.  I know I have tools and resources and people in my life that can help me through it, but it does not diminish the fear I feel.

I am undergoing therapy right now to help me recover my life and find my way back home.  None of this is easy and with the exhaustion, it makes it that much more difficult.  I know that there is a way through this.  I hope that I still believe there is a way through it.  The only thing I can cling to with any certainty is what a wise person once told me, THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 5/1/15 by Don Shetterly

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