Resilience.
It's what some of us have to be our whole lives. We're constantly kicked off the horse, we have to wipe the sand off our pants and wiggle out the bruises from our impact down. It's not easy getting back up and sometimes it is just our pride that gets in the way that makes it so hard.
I feel like sometimes I'm in a rotation of a few days between having to get back on the horse, sometimes it feels like every morning with my chronic pain and fatigue.
It honestly feels as if I'm no more closer to the goal based on the amount of times I have to keep getting back up. I just want rest from exhausting myself out, meanwhile the horse (the dream) is still wanting to continue on and I find myself chasing after the horse as it's going ahead. I feel lost on time, like it's whizzing by and the dream is further from my clutches.
I don't believe in keeping face for positivity's sake. How this society is structured is not meant for people like me: chronically ill and neurodivergent. I sometimes just want to give up and refuse to go into work by how my body is being brutalized by working full-time when most with my condition can't.
There was a time where I was in a wheelchair and it scares me if I were to go back to that reality. It scares me how so many of us are just a few missed paychecks from being on the street with no social safety net in place.
But still I grit my teeth and I rise in the morning. I shouldn't have to but I have no other option. I am still pushing for joy in my daily life, despite how fast they whiz past. I feel like I am living for the weekend yet I try to make the most of them and feel like a wizard trying to freeze time.
I mix all the pain and the hope and charge forward towards the things that light me up in the dark. It's understanding my darkness, my shadow self, and the reality of what I live in, but not giving into to hopelessness, recognizing the roadblocks that are in the way and coming up with alternative routes.
I am not ready to despair despite everything and I will cling to this, even if I am in a sinking ship.
