When stuck in this space, it is tempting to hide from life, but with all the beauty in the world, it doesn't serve any of us to hide.
PUBLISHED April 13, 2018
Samira Rajabi was diagnosed with a vestibular schwannoma, also known as an acoustic neuroma in 2012. She has had ten surgeries to deal with her tumor and its various side effects. She writes a blog about her life, surgeries, recovery and experiences at LivingWithHerbert.com. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies media studies. In her spare time she plays with her two pups and spends time with her husband exploring Philadelphia.
There is a space between sickness and healing, an in-between space where you're neither sick nor well. You are in process, being made on your journey towards wellness, or more aptly on your journey to whatever future circumstance that will befall you. In that space, you learn to make do. You ration your activity, so you don’t aggravate your pain, you ration your pain meds so you don’t get too tired and your whole life becomes a precarious balance of your expectations and your reality. In that space, when you are so focused on managing, you can almost forget what it is that led you to manage your circumstance at all. You forget the catalyst that caused you to have to change the way you were living. For me, it was a brain tumor. For others it is cancer, and for others it is something else, some other experience, some other trauma. Whatever it is, our life experiences propel us forward, snatching away our abilities, our confidence and our day-to-day patterns and then slowly return them over time, trickling in like a faucet with a leak. This is the nature of our precarious and fragile human existence. This is the balancing act of life. This process isn't easy, it isn't straightforward, and it can feel uneven, taking steps back even as you inch forward.
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