Charissa Graves
From the Graves
I swear I have personality traits that aren’t related to disability and chronic illness, but I’ve been having a hard time remembering them recently.
There’s been a fog in my mind, and it’s thin enough that I can see everything I need to do on the other side, but it’s also thick and dense and it makes the ground beneath my (metaphorical) feet too slippery to take full steps.
It’s not fun.
This fog isn’t new; if my brain had a climate I imagine it would resemble San Francisco. It’s at its worst in the mornings and evenings, but it could come back with a vengeance at any time.
And, sometimes, it brings storms along with it. Those storms have become more and more frequent as of late.
As you may have discerned from the title, I haven’t been doing well recently. I’m not exactly “well” most of the time, but usually I at least have an idea of why I feel the way I do and how to deal with it.
Recently, though, my malady has been a mystery, and that’s frightening. Usually, when new issues show up or become significantly worse, they mean that one of my preexisting conditions has gotten worse, or I’m about to get a new diagnosis.
Looking at my old medical records, the end of this month will mark two years since I officially received my fibromyalgia diagnosis, and June will be two years since being diagnosed with functional neurological disorder. Somehow, both things simultaneously feel like they happened yesterday and a million years ago.
In that one day or one million years, I’ve learned a lot about myself. The main things being that I’m going to have to keep learning and relearning for the rest of my life, and there really isn’t much that other people can do to help. They can be there, sure, but in my experience that’s about it.
I used to love learning. I still do, but it’s more frustrating these days because I’m not nearly as good as I used to be. My brain used to be quick, sharp and significantly more capable of committing things to memory.
While the physical symptoms of my condition are rather apparent, and I tend to talk about them more, the truth is that the cognitive effects have managed to take over in a way that I never could’ve expected.
So, somewhere in the midst of trying to keep afloat (with little success, admittedly), I’ve also been in mourning, deep in grief over the person I thought I was and the things I thought that I was capable of.
I try to remain relatively flexible, as one must be in this field, but when it comes to my own personal expectations, there is a certain stubborn streak.
That streak is what I’m relying on to keep going. Without it, I would be an aimless, jobless hermit.
Even when I started struggling in my classes and had to take my leave of absence, it was never in doubt that this is what I wanted to do.
Why? Because it is the great joy and honor of my life for people to trust me with telling their stories, and I intend to keep doing everything in my power to ensure that I do it to the best of my abilities.
In my last column, I thanked the readers of the Tribune for becoming my new home, but now I’d like to thank them for being much more than that. So, thank you for also being the reason that I (most days) am able to get out of bed.
Charissa Graves is a reporter for The Hutchinson Tribune. She can be reached at: charissa@hutchtribune.com.