It's not enough to just be alive

I apologize if the title is shocking.

I've been reading this morning more tales of Lyme and re-watched the trailer to Under Our Skin (which used to be available online but apparently isn't anymore).

Someone said it isn't enough to be alive. Oh how that resonated with me this week. There was a time where simply being alive was enough. I could appreciate the pleasantness of life just simply by being.

That's not enough.

Just being is too painful. My body hurts, my head spins, I feel exhausted both physically and mentally. Living for the sake of living is not enough for me. I have to find other reasons to live.

I was talking recently to another Lyme survivor on Twitter about good and bad days. She said something about counting the moments not the days or the weeks. That phrase has changed my life. I certainly am not yet able to count good months. I am barely able to count good weeks. I can sometimes count good days. But I can always count good moments. I am so used to quantifying my life more globally, so each day was good or bad. And when I strung bad days together one after the next, my life seemed pretty gloomy. Let's be real, it is pretty sad.

But no matter how bad my day is there is ALWAYS a good moment that interrupts the bad.

It might be Kellen giggling with me when we are singing on the couch. Or lying in bed with him asking to read the "Be Butt" book (belly button). There is joy in picking the ripened tomatoes off the vine or walking out to the mailbox to find an unexpected card.

This illness has made me painfully aware of how those moments can save us from our pain, our suffering. It's no longer enough for me to just be alive. I have to live in those moments, stringing one second of joy to another in hopes that I will create a necklace of days that turn into weeks and eventually into months.