Have you ever heard of Murphy's Law? Actually if I am not wrong there are many of them, but I will take the general concept. Well, it basically tells you that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
I am very positive person and people often tell me that I have a special energy and I can bring good vibes. But I have to admit that during the last weeks I lost a lot of my positivity and started having bad mood and avoiding people, also simply because I was sick and tired of answering to the question "how are you?".
Receiving a diagnosis gave me some hope but soon after I went back home a friend called me telling me he had been tested positive to Covid-19 and since he visited me right before my hospitalization I had to start a quarantine. Icing on the cake. I was devastated. Not only because I haven't had any social activity in the last period, or because of Christmas (I am a proud Grinch club member), or because I was scared, but mostly because I couldn't start with the treatment for PPPD (and continue with the osteopathy for my back and neck contracture). And, of course, according to our lovely friend Murphy, I turned out being positive to Covid-19 in the next days. The isolation was extremely difficult because I got a sinus infection and my ears and head were in constant pain. I felt a lot of pressure inside my forehead and a lot of pressure in my auditory canal, as if I was hiking a peak and running down every 5 minutes or so, not speaking of my unsteadiness which went worse and worse (if you ever had sinusitis you know what I am speaking of). PPPD symptoms + Covid + isolation + side effects of first days of Escitalopram (mainly vision loss, troubles to sleep for which I had to take melatonin and nausea.) + not being able to walk broke me down. I lied on my couch, not being able to do anything, for almost 3 weeks. Well, the only thing I could do was listening to podcast and, sometimes read. And this saved my mood. And my mind. I started focusing again and trying to think about what I was feeling in that precise moment.
"Respect it, give it space and time, knowing that everything comes to us at a certain time for a specific reason and only when we are ready to receive it" (thank you Corrado Debiasi, "Il monaco che amava i gatti).
I remembered all that happened to me in the last year and took a long breath. Maybe the real message, after all, was that I had to accept this, experience some additional despair and wait for better days to come. Reflecting and resting. Also if in a world where everything is running and we are literally overwhelmed by stimuli, stopping does not seem to be an option. After all, stopping would mean losing the thousands of opportunities that we literally chase every day, losing appointments, relationships, experiences, money. It would mean disappointing societal expectations and feeling that everything is slipping through our fingers. Which is what FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out is all about). The truth is that keeping up with everything is not an option and the sooner we figure this out, the faster we will stop feeling inadequate and not up to scratch. Of never feeling enough. Of chasing every commitment like crazy, of wanting to excel in everything. To always push body and mind to the limit and use 150% of the energy we have available.
Stopping does not mean being weak, but recognising that our body and mind also need moments of rest and listening to them.
Whether this stop is intentional or caused by greater forces, I wish everyone to be able to take the best from these moments, embracing adversity and trying to learn from it, to grow, heal and be reborn more aware and respectful of ourselves, taking nothing for granted and thanking the universe for all the beauty that surrounds us and for the souls (THANKS) that are on our side in this journey we call life.
And with these words in mind I rested and waited for the right moment to be able to start my PPPD rehab.
K'gari (Fraser Island), Australia, January 2020
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