Flare

Pain has returned.

After being absent for… how long this time? 

Forever, I thought, I hoped.  Was is half a year of movable joints before the stiffness settled back in between my bones?

In the world of autoimmune dysfunction, it’s called a flare.  I find that funny because a flare usually means a burst of energy, whereas this kind of flare is an energy sap.  Everything just becomes a little bit harder: my morning miles, sleep, holding a toothbrush.

More than anything, I miss lightness.

The contrast is sharp.  I remember when Max was an infant and this disease first entered my body.  I didn’t understand it.  Lugging him around was so hard.  He was a small baby, but he always felt so heavy.  I remember silently cursing the people we visited who would make us stand at their doorway bestowing kisses and oohs and ahs, before inviting us in.  How my arms ached!

One day, I picked him up and it felt like nothing.  He was air itself.  Excitedly, I swung him on my hip, threw him in the car, and we went off on an adventure together.  We were utterly weightless.

Free.

What I later learned was that the lightness, which seemed extraordinary at the time, was really just a normal state of being.  The fatigue and heaviness were not normal.

It’s easy to forget that, isn’t it?

That lightness and ease is our normal state of being.