""The wound is the place where the Light enters you." ~Rumi I didn't know what it meant to grieve a body that was still alive until mine turned on me. It began like a whisper-fatigue that lingered, strange symptoms that didn't match, a quiet fear I tried to ignore. Then one night, I collapsed. I woke up in a hospital room I didn't recognize, attached to IVs I hadn't agreed to, surrounded by medical voices that spoke in certainty while I sat in confusion."
"When you live with chronic illness, the world doesn't change with you. Everyone else keeps moving. Fast. Meanwhile, your pace slows to survival mode. Appointments become your calendar. You measure your days in energy-not hours. You go from thinking "I'm strong" to wondering "Am I weak now?" And the hardest part is, people still see you as who you were before. But inside, you're unraveling."
"No one tells you how much grief comes with getting sick. Yes, I mourned the physical freedom I lost. But more than that, I grieved who I thought I was. The capable one. The dependable one. The one who could do it all. I had been that woman. Now I couldn't even cook dinner some nights, let alone help others like I used to."
A sudden collapse and hospitalization marked a sharp break from previous life and identity. Symptoms began as whisper-fatigue and mismatched signs, escalating until the body failed. Chronic illness slowed daily life to survival mode, replacing schedules with appointments and measuring time by available energy. The narrator mourned lost physical freedom and the loss of being capable, dependable, and helpful. Social interactions required masking pain as explaining felt harder than hiding. Silence became a shield. The experience forced grieving the old self and a need for compassion, adaptation, acceptance, and redefinition of self.
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