Two Weeks Until Year’s End

But sometimes it is yours to carry.

When I look back on the whole year and all the changes it brought for me personally and physically, it seems big and like such a huge amount to carry. Frankly, it feels like it was too much.  

I started the year with cold hands and white fingers.  

I am ending the year with cold hands and white fingers, persistent numbness in my right foot (so far only the right), hEDS which explains my chronic slow digestion and resulting gut problems, a new inguinal hernia (I now have bilateral inguinal hernias), osteoporosis in my spine (but only osteopenia in my hips), and a torn bi-leaflet mitral heart valve resulting in moderate regurgitation.

I never should have written all that out!!  Because every year will feel like a dumpster fire if we only look at all the bad stuff all at once as a whole.  A whole of anything is big.  Too big.  That is why all the new year’s advice usually includes looking at things one piece at a time, one day at a time.  I read a good saying the other day, something about change is made in a 1000 tiny steps.  Nothing about life has to be lumped all at once into one single daredevil jump across the Grand Canyon!  Yikes!

I can make a list of all the good stuff too, just by looking back at the photos I took this year.  There was a lot of great stuff that happened this year, trips to see family and memories made, etc.  They are all past events and things I can look back on and remember with happiness.  All the other medical crap that happened this year, (despite at least getting answers to questions I’ve had for years—which is the good part), sadly, I get to carry them all into the new year with ongoing concern…

I wish I could just leave it all behind in the rear view mirror as the past is the past, but our bodies don’t work that way.  We carry our physical burdens into the new year.  We can’t leave them behind.

That was one of the biggest realizations I had this year, as a life-long dieter.  All the health diagnoses I received this year are not something I can get rid of with the right diet and application of discipline and consistency.  Or with new coping skills and routines so that I could simply “lose” the physical burden of excess weight that my body is carrying, and be lighter and the more healthy for the changes I make, (and all that is real and valid, and almost as serious as any other heath diagnosis, and I must not forget that).  But most physical burdens are different than mental burdens that can be eased somewhat with better thinking, mental reframing and coping skills, etc.  So, all I can do to lighten the physical burdens I carry, is by maintaining the physical fitness I have (thank goodness I worked hard in 2023 and 2024 to achieve that!), and focus on all the positives in my life, of which yes, there are many.  I have family.  And really, my body is amazing despite all the defects in the manufacturing!

I suppose writing out all the negatives in this blog post does already make me feel lighter.  Listing them all just now felt heavy, at first…but now they are off my spirit and instead they sit here on this page.  They are not me, I am not them.  I am just a person dealing with stuff like so many other people.  And some of my stuff is not really that bad, and could be stable for a long time, (I will know when I have follow-up testing at the end of February—ug, another medical appointment to wait for, and I hate waiting, lol).

Whatever you have to physically carry into the New Year, there is no point in wishing you did not have to carry it.  And I am sorry for the things you carry that are unique to you.  (And just because someone carries heavier things than you, does not mean yours are not heavy to you, just saying).

The only thing you can control is how you carry your own burdens, and we all have burdens to carry. Carry them with your head held high.  Lighten what you can.  Be undefeated, either way.