Time is experienced through the body, and the quality of our internal environment affects our experience of time.
When I’m in pain, I want to take one big step over the upcoming hours, arriving at the time when the pain subsides. In the middle of the night, when time is long and black, I want to dissolve into it, asleep. When it’s summertime and the afternoon is filled with the scent of blooms, I want time to become as languid as the air itself, wide until the clanking of dinnertime.
The trouble with illness is the fickle relationship we sufferers develop with time. We want to speed it up, to get the discomfort over with – but the pain itself draws time out, like broken gears on a bike slowly separating. Our experience gets disjointed – intense in every moment, but monotonous in its intensity.
When we look back, we see the periods of pain stacked. We see the one-directional element (pain to no pain), and the cyclical element (as we move through these cycles again and again). This leaves time for evolution in the gaps between, when we have enough stamina and energy to create new experiences for ourselves. But even then, we expect that pain will arrive once again – in minutes, hours, days, or weeks. It’s difficult to build a plan for a future that feels unknowable.
I often grieve the past I believe I could’ve had, were it not for pain. I grieve the place I find myself, which is different from the place I once hoped I’d be. And I grieve the future I might have had, were it not for all this.
But I’m coming to see my limitations as a form of structure. Just as a river flows within banks – and sometimes even faster when the banks narrow – I too flow best within a structure that’s defined. I’m finding and crafting that structure now.
The last few months, I’ve also diligently cleared debris. I believe this work is in service of letting my river flow freely.
And when a river flows freely, time feels fluid too – not stuck, not reverting to a past rhythm or trying to accelerate to a future that my body simply hasn’t reached yet. Just here. Putting the banks in place, getting the support I need, addressing my pain, flowing.
Such good writing Camille. 💙