Trying matters.

I saw a post on Facebook last week from a tattoo artist talking about the power of tattooing the number of days sober on loved ones of people who had died. They talked about it being important to recognise that they tried; that the trying mattered. In true Facebook fashion, I can't find that post anywhere now to link to it, but it brought me to tears for a variety of reasons.

In seemingly unrelated news, I am on a trial of steroids to see if my chronic illness really is fibro or if it's something else, and for the first time in over a year I am functional. I can walk my dogs, sit at my desk, work, study, socialise, run upstairs!

On a dog walk during this miraculous recovery I noticed how some trees are covered in brambles. Their trunks sometimes buried in them, lost in the thorns, smothered by them, but they still reach out towards the light. Through tears I remembered that Facebook post again and got lost in the thought that trying matters.

It would be easy at the moment to think it doesn't matter that I can walk again, take my dogs out, cook my own food, shower daily, get dressed... It's not hard right now, it's not a challenge, so it would be easy to assume then that it doesn't matter. It doesn't count. But on my dog walk, running with my terrier across a field, every single step on the gravel while hearing birds sing, hugging trees with utter joy, all of it matters. In fact, if anything it matters more because I don't know how long it will last.

I am re-learning to revel in the mundanity of life, something I used to do often and found a powerful tool in recovering from depression. It's also something that has got lost as I became chronically ill. It's difficult to revel in pain that means you can't sit upright in bed, or fatigue that means you can't even take your dogs out in your wheelchair. I didn't want to revel in "I managed to write a uni assignment through such intense pain that the speech to text program thought I was starting new sentences at random."

This break, this time off from being chronically ill, has reminded me that I can't only celebrate the wins and revel in the small joys when things are easy. This is a skill that I have to continue to cultivate, that I have to cling to like a life raft, when things are awful.

Much like those trees, I may be being suffocated by brambles but the act of choosing to keep growing, to keep reaching out for the light, to keep blooming, whatever that looks like day to day, matters. The trying is not diminished by the fact that the fight is unwinnable, it is only made more beautiful and more meaningful. If, or indeed when, those brambles win, the fact that I fought will still matter.