It would be easier

After a while, it’s easier to give up.  It gets tiring to insist upon the amorphous and to define the unquantifiable.  With no bleeding wound or broken bone to point to, unanswered symptoms get brushed aside as distractions, livable, or all in your head.  And maybe they’re right.  Maybe a stronger person would soldier on, drop the quest, and stop complaining.  Maybe it is some aftershock of stress or anxiety, an offshoot of a brain that runs on overdrive.  Maybe my search for an answer is futile, sifting through the haystack for the missing needle that even stumbled upon, wouldn’t erase the symptoms.

But I can’t give it up.  Even amidst the doubts and prevailing expert opinions, I have to believe my reality, validate my experience, raise my hand and assert my truth in the face of mute explanations. 

Still, it’s easier to back down, wave the white flag and grit my teeth.  It would be easier to stop fighting, waiting in doctors’ offices, and just exhale into the status quo.  Except easier isn’t always better.  Easier means resignation to a smaller life, limited by distance and sickness.  Easier is subpar, allowing nagging illness to dictate my days.

I’ve done that already.  I know what that life looks like and I’m ready for something better.  I want to bathe in freedom, empowered to dance through my days without sickness as my leading partner.  I want to climb despite the occasional fall, risk and leap, weeping worth the laughter.  I want to soak up the sunshine of ordinary and join the march of normalcy.  I’m tired of watching from the sidelines, tired of filling prescriptions, paper gowns and side effects.  But I’m not willing to give up.  Because I’m even more tired of a lifetime scattered with aches and sorrow, and am determined to avoid a forever of not feeling well. 

So I keep standing up, singing my truth, and insisting on an invisible reality.  I keep searching, asking for help, and seeking the last puzzle piece, hoping for an answer that carries a reward of health. 

It would be easier to give up.  But easier isn’t always best.