Sunday, January 26, 2014

A Last Look

Four years have passed.   I am just about looking down the eye of forty and can't believe how
thirty-five feels like a lifetime ago. How quickly time goes on.

I have spent the last several months being ridiculously reflective.  With all my life changes in 2013, I have had a lot to think about.  I have had a great deal to look back on.  Now is the time for me to turn my head, my thoughts, and my life forward. 

Four years ago today I was dying.  I didn't know it, but I was playing with death. Disguised as an unbelievably debilitating headache, my brain was slowly dying.   I would have been suffering this pain for five days by now.  Only to succumb to the annoyance of being in pain and the desire to return to work, would I seek medical help in another day.  Why I didn't go now, or days before, I have no idea.  Why I went the day I did, not really sure either.  But the decision saved my life.  It was not divine intervention.  It was not a knowledge based decision.  It was luck. Nothing more.

Its funny when I think back to the stroke, really think back, I remember the pain and not much else.  I am so far removed from that ordeal I don't even feel like it happened to me.  Like it was a dream I had or something I heard about from someone else.  But it is not.  It did happen to me.  And although I do not remember it all in great detail, I am living the effects of it every day I breathe.  As each day passes I embrace more and more of myself, finding gratitude and acceptance where my path has led and continues to lead me.

Tomorrow marks fours years since my stroke.  My thirties are over in May.  I begin a new a decade, a new chapter.  Leaving my thirties and all that those years encompassed behind me.  This will be the last year I commemorate my stroke.  I triumph over death every day.  We all do in one way or another.  I do not want to hang on to this experience and have it define me.  Will I reflect on it down the road?  Of course.  Yet it is no longer something I need to recognize as a milestone.  Everyday is a milestone. 

I got a fortune cookie that said, "Remember yesterday, but live for today". An all too appropriate sentiment for me.  Not to mention damn good advice.

So tomorrow I would be four years dead.  I am not dead.  I am very much alive and plan on being around for a long time to come.