If I Were Healthy

Living with a chronic illness means you are sick more often than you’re not.

You endure some form of dull aching, sharp shooting, stabbing, burning or searing pain, crippling fatigue, unpleasant prescription medication side effects, joint, organ, muscle and soft tissue damage, loss of hair, eyesight, hearing, cognitive function, or some other infliction as a result of a chronic illness on a pretty regular basis.

*Taking a deep breath*

(That was a massive run-on sentence…my apologies)

The list can actually be, and sometimes seem, endless.

So, when you get that one day (or a few if you’re fortunate) where you can do anything at all that you haven’t been able to do in a long time, it’s like you’ve…

Oh, I don’t know…

WON THE LOTTERY!!!

And you run around like a mad person, maybe not on a shopping spree to get that Maybach you always wanted, but catching up on household chores, getting outside to enjoy the weather (whatever it may be), waving, smiling, and chatting like a Magpie on speed to whomever crosses your path, and all because today you have a reprieve from your usual aches and pains and you feel…

ALIVE!!!

Speaking for myself, I can assure you that when I get a good day or two, I keep my composure, put my shoulders back, hold my head up high, pull my belly-button into my spine and step outside.

Keeping my private desire to chase squirrels all over the yard to myself, I calmly carry on with my day as…

If I Were Healthy!

I changed the words to Beyonce’s song “If Were A Boy” to “If I Were Healthy” in an effort to describe what so many living with chronic illnesses wish, strive and pray for on a daily basis: to be healthy.

 

~Today is a Gift that I Choose to Live Thankfully~

FalanyaPictureMy name is Falanya and my blog chronicles the life I’m living right now. Lupus sufferers commonly refer to themselves as “Lupies” and, interestingly enough, this painfully crazy disease can provide some pretty loopy moments. It’s those moments that can lend a little laughter to an otherwise unfunny existence.

 

A Lupie Existence (Falanya’s blog)
 A Lupie Existence on Facebook
Email: aLupieExistence@gmail.com

Poetry: Low Tide by Rachel Swirsky

Fear binds
knees to stomach
forehead to feet.
Smothered, dissonant,
familiar paralysis.

Infinitesimal miscalculations
replicating X, should be Y,
should be Z, R, Q, N, should
be the person who
avoids my gaze
in mirrors.

A broken equation,
solution dissolving
into equal parts:
crumpled afternoons,
thirsty riverbeds,
severed strings.

———————–

Rachel Swirsky Rachel Swirsky graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005 and the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2008. She has published more than fifty short stories in magazines and anthologies, and her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award, and others. Her work has twice won the Nebula Award. Her second short story collection, HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET: MYTHS OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, came out from Subterranean Press in 2013. She only writes poetry occasionally, and is pleased to have a few lines out after taking a break for a few years.

Grand Jeté (the Great Leap) – Nebula Nominee 2015

If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love – Nebula Winner 2014, Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee

The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window – Nebula winner 2011, Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee

Eros, Philia, Agape – Hugo nominee

A Memory of Wind – Nebula nominee