In My Rearview Mirror

1/9/15 

I’m exactly where I was one year ago, only 20 pounds heavier with worse asthma. It’s a new year, I’m sick and can’t shake it, and still haven’t finished my book.

So, that’s a bitch of a situation…

*******

July 2020.

I turned 37 this week.

It’s been years since I wrote that piteous post in 2015. I didn’t know it at the time, but with every snarky journal entry, every declaration, I pivoted one millimeter in a new direction.

Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed by all the things I need to change. It takes a minute before I realize how much I’ve actually done. When I remember to look around, nothing is the same.

I know better. Sometimes I just forget.

I know better but I forget to check the rearview mirror. Looking back on days like 1/9/2015, when I wrote that sad, sickly entry, I am stunned by how far I’ve come in just a few years.

In 2015 I was fully in it, fully immersed in the hell that was a blockage in my brain, and (barely) living with a compromised immune system from a decade of inhaled steroids to treat a lung problem I didn’t have. Back then taking a breath through my poor, shredded wind bags was like drawing air through a screen. If I did get a full breath, it would catch in my throat, instigating another coughing fit with pain that was like a smack to the back of my head with a hammer.

I was always sick. Always on my way to Walgreens for another $40 worth of cold meds or to fill another prescription to quell the cough enough to catch a few hours of sleep so I could face another day at work where the pressure in my brain built with each ragged breath until the top of my skull threatened to explode and I cried through another lunch hour, and put myself to bed at 7 to cry some more in peace.

Sometimes I forget to appreciate just how bad it was.

Five years later, I haven’t broken every bad habit or manifested all of my wildest dreams. BUT I’m not sick. I don’t live in Chiari pain (at the time of the 2015 post, I hadn’t even been diagnosed yet). I’m not taking any medication—OTC or otherwise. I am writing this right now on a Thursday morning while my dog snores beside me and my son sleeps in his swing a few feet away. My job is to raise a tiny human, not wile away for a paycheck under someone else’s thumb. I am free of nearly every physical shackle and chain that weighed me down for so long.

Except, of course, the actual weight—which doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. It feels like heavy luggage I just need to set down. I can’t think of anything better to do in my 37th year.

The path is cleared of so many of the obstacles that used to make even simple things incredibly hard. I’m not exactly where I thought I would be nearing the end of my thirties, but I am exactly where I want to be RIGHT NOW.

If I ever forget to remember where I’ve been, I need only glance in the rearview mirror. Or, better yet, keep looking forward at the open road, and leave the past and its horrors behind in a cloud of smoke.