Its been a while since I have last written a blog. I was travelling for quite sometime. Its been a time of much contemplation since I feel the situations that I had to encounter somehow have changed who I am.
The biggest encounter was with my health. A couple of days before I was to leave for a vacation to Australia to see my sister and my brand new nephew, I started having this noise in my ears. I woke up one morning, went to the toilet and got back in bed and there it was...the noise. It was like air coming our of a went but a little sharper. I still remember the paralyzing fear I felt in my gut. I was a feeling of being invaded. The quiet space that I have revered for all of my life was gone in a second, to be replaced by this constant noise. Just like that things changed in my life.
I could not sleep that night because there was an intruder in my own body. A noise making creature so to speak and I could not rest. I did the only thing I knew...search the internet for an answer. Nothing that came up make me feel any better. I sat in my meditation room, hoping that I would feel a sense of ease. Instead it was tormenting. I felt utterly miserable. Towards morning I fell asleep listening to a talk my Ajahn Brahm, because one of the things in the internet said, to use noise to cancel out the noise.
Then I had to go away. I did not want to. But everything was booked and it was an expensive vacation of 6 weeks. For the first time in my entire life, I left on vacation not wanting to go and the noise lingered on. I was told that it could be tinnitus. A ringing in the ear that is chronic for no clear reason. Of course I was in another country so I could not access medical facilities as would have liked to if I was in my own country.
I am used to chronic illness. I have chronic headaches and dizziness. Have had that for the past 5 years. But for some reasons this noise in my ear, felt like a new blow. I felt robbed, cheated on by life itself. Despite my headaches and dizziness I could meditate, I could simply close my eyes and give myself to the healing quietness around me. But now, that space was defiled. I felt miserable and utterly stranded in life. I was in a new country. My husband was in another country at work. Even though I was at my sisters, she had a 14 month old. People were lost in their own lifes and so was I. The difference was that I did not want to be lost in mine. It was too unpleasant. I cried many times thinking of my past and how simple life once was and how that it is complicated. I felt unfairly treated by life.
I mean haven't I gone through enough. People live for years without any sickness. I am too young to be this sick, for this long a time. And the punches keep coming. I wanted to die. I could not imagine living with this for another moment, let alone a year or ten years or more.
Its been almost 3 months since I had this and its not changed. But somewhere I feel like I have begun to change. Slowly but gradually.
Having a chronic illness is not easy. It was never easy even when I had my headaches...and then I kinda got used to having them. I remember in October I was telling my neurologist that they don't have to cure it but to ease it cause I have learnt to make friends with my headache. Then "Bam" the noises started.
It was an enemy inside of me. I wanted to destroy it, run away from it, ignore its very existence. But it was not possible. How can I run away from my own body without destroying it?
I fought with myself, which was also my new sickness, until I was emotionally exhausted. At first it was disbelief that something like this could happen to me again, then it was anger, for the injustice that I would be young and I still have to live day in day out with these miserable conditions while others just partied and went on with their little merry lives, then it was sadness that I had to live with it and the feeling that I just could not. Most of all I felt sad that I could not sit down and close my eyes and feel that quiet space surrounding me.
I was lost again. I felt like I had been bobbing in and out of water just long enough to take breaths to survive. But I felt that somethings just landed on my head and pushed me under water completely. I was drowning. I had no answers and there was no one that I could reach out to for help. The medical practitioners are only there to say what it could be and prescribe something for the symptoms. If its not helping they can only say how sorry they were and I heard that when I was in Australia. Somehow it did not make me feel better.
My husband was in another country. He was busy that I could speak to him once a day. Somedays all i could do was cry. But again, he was sorry for me and felt sad that he could not do anything for me. My sister and my brother in law did the best they could, which was to direct me to a doctor, give their vehicle for me to access what I needed to access and inquire about me. Again they were sorry.
But no amount of sorriness made me feel better or make things better for me. I hope that people realize that saying 'sorry' to someone when they are not well or having a bad time is of no use. It does nothing. Perhaps the person who says it feels better because the only thing they can do is to say "Sorry". But never fool yourself thinking that its going to help the other person.
So I was desparate. And i turned to the only thing I turn to when I am going under. Meditation. It was so very difficult. I felt that I was starting to learn meditation all over again. I could not do breath meditation because the quiet space was quickly filled with the noise. So I fell back into a meditation that I started my journey with. Metta meditation and chanting. I chanted quite a lot during the first few weeks of my holiday and after coming back home. I chanted because it helped me drown the noise. So I chanted slowly anything that came to my head. During that time I felt a sense of ease. Chants are positive and wholesome songs almost like hyms. They describe the virtues of the buddha, qualities of wholesomess and much more. So when I chanted for 20 minutes I felt like much peace. Then I gradullay started metta. It like quiet verbalising of loving-kindness thoughts to oneself and others. I did the best I could under the circumstances.
When my husband got to Australia we were travelling about that there as no time for my noise to pop up.
But it all came back once I got home. MY home is very quiet without much noise from the surroundings. So when all go quiet, the noise in my ear fills it up pretty well. It was like going back to hell. I knew I had to face this eventuality. But knowing and facing it for real were quite different.
Its worse when people who are closest to you cannot help you at times like these. One becomes truly alone. I realised how isolated each of us are. We are fooled into beliving that we have people, loved ones and friends around us. Yes they are there physically and sometimes mentally but I can assure you no one can take away the feeling of isolation you feel inside when you are dealt with a blow from life. Only you feel it and unless there is someone who knows exactly what you are going through, its like what everybody says is gibberish. I relaised that I am truly alone and that I should stop fooling myself that there are people who can take care of me.
I realized that no matter what you better be your best support system. Cause when the going gets tough, if you dont have the goods, the chances are that you would fall into a bit of a spot which is dark and ugly.
I realised that people have their own lives and their own priorities no matter how close they are to you. No one is going to stop or speed down theirs for you. That was a hard realization. Im mostly taking about my husband who is so very busy with work that the first week we were back and I was struggling all he could do was be busy and have a nice drink in the evening. When I told him that I needed help and I needed him to think of me, he was mad at me for asking him to stop his business and his drinking.
Again I fell back into meditation. Meditation is by no means a cure. Up to this date it hasnt cured my illness for make them any less, but what it had helped me with is to come to terms with the fact that this is life and so are people. Even though you might think its a negative state to be in, I find that it has kept me sane, made me strong and self reliant to some degree.
At the end of the day, this condition may never leave me until the day I die. But I cannot fight until that day. So I am surrendering my need to get better to the nature of life. It's a hard truth to come to terms with. I may never will. Or I might think Ive come to terms with it until I am hit with another punch in my belly to realise that in fact I haven't. However future maybe, I realise that life has mysterious wasys of unfolding. Some of it you make like and some of it you may not like. But whether you like it or not, those are the cards you are dealt with.
It very humbling. I see people don't get these things easily. When someone gets sick, they don't think of the others who are like them or worse. We fall victim to it with ease. In that we miss our lesson. We also fail to learn when we are not sick also. Because those who don't face these issues are so proud of their health that they cannot fathom the pain someone else might go through. Again we lose the lesson. I see an in between. A place where we gain much whether or not we are sick. A sense of feeling that we are in this together.
