Different Gravity

365 days ago I walked into a mathematics lecture not knowing that I would never set foot on that university campus again. 365 days ago I had a seizure that triggered a catastrophic chain of events that derailed every aspect of my life that I had come to know and love. I ended up in hospital for six months, lost the ability to walk, re-learned how to eat and drink and dress myself and for a while felt like my life was over.

Yet 365 days later, I can push my own wheelchair, I have my own flat (albeit in a very accommodated manner) and I’m studying a course at university that I genuinely love! Does that make me better? No, of course not, I am still disabled, I am still chronically ill, but I have purpose and hope in my life again and for now that’s enough.

There’s a post on Twitter (X??) by @CrowsFault that really speaks to me, I think I’d almost consider it poetry in it’s own right. It says:

Towards the end of those six months I spent in the hospital (and often in the six months that followed) I thought of those words. The personification of hope as a fighter, bruised and bloody; swearing as she picks herself off the floor once again. I didn’t find hope because I sat and waited for it to come to me. I fought tooth and nail against my body and my brain until I’d climbed high enough that the floor was too far away to risk falling again.

Hope is not a thing with feathers as Emily Dickinson described it so many years ago. Hope is forged in the flames of despair. It is a burning, scorching desire for things to get better, and a choice to do whatever you need to do to get there. But hope can also be quiet, small actions like listening to your body and prioritising your mental health. There is not one way to have hope, you just need to make sure that you hold on once you’ve found it.

So now I’ve found my hope, what am I going to do?

I’m going to be happy <3