It’s a Wonderful Life

The other day, I wrote a recipe for my homemade chicken noodle soup, wherein I briefly noted what may happen when too much stress takes hold of the body, leading to short-term and long-term illness. There have been numerous scientific studies and journals on this topic that you are absolutely free to read, all documenting the same thing: long-term stress causes physical problems. Sometimes they are treatable, sometimes they are not. While there may be a spiritual backing to all of this, for the moment I’m just going to focus on my experience with this and why I believe this has been part of my path and I absolutely signed up for it. Not that I am insisting upon my experience as universal truth for everyone, but I hope it may at least provide some solace for anyone who may be dealing with something similar but may not have any answers as to why. Like the centuries-old question “why me?”

And don’t let anyone bully you for asking that, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Don’t ask it out of pity, but instead out of pure curiosity. There’s always an answer to the question “why”, you just have to find it.

Again, I can’t speak for all stress-related illnesses or disabilities, but I can speak of the ones I have. I’ll start by saying: despite anything that anyone in spiritual circles may tell you, if you are dealing with a stress-related illness, it is not your fault. It’s not your fault for not being able to remove yourself from the environment that caused the stress to begin with and it’s not your fault for not knowing how to remove that stress from your system. Sometimes we deal with things that compound stress overtime, which is what long-term stress inherently is and is what causes these problems. It builds and builds, and our bodies hold onto that energy because there’s nowhere else safe to put it. Like hitting concrete with a metal bar, you can feel the vibrations in your arms, and it shakes up your whole system. Those stress shockwaves get trapped in our bodies and unfortunately, that can cause permanent damage.

When I was growing up, everything about life was stressful. No matter where I turned, there was always something putting me on edge. Early childhood was unbearable, to the point where I invented my own fantasy worlds to live inside my head just to pretend real life wasn’t actually real. My teen-years were worse, in their own way. Eventually getting kicked out and falling into some desperate situations that were very unpleasant, as well. Essentially, any time it seemed I had a chance to get one leg up, I’d fall down another five feet and have to start clawing my way back out again. I suppose I should be more grateful for where I ended up in life but in a lot of ways, it still feels the same. At any rate—I know stress like an old friend, probably the oldest friend I have.

As a result, though, I had some physical problems pop up. I had insomnia and night-terrors growing up, to the point where I couldn’t remember hardly any dreams I had that weren’t nightmares. But I also developed a sleep disorder called REM sleep behavior disorder, where the part of your brain that’s supposed to paralyze you while you’re sleeping stops functioning properly when you’re under high stress. The side-effect is acting out your dreams. I hardly notice, though it causes my husband some grief as I occasionally sleepily punch him in the face every once in a while.

My other issues, I’ll compound into one because they’re all interchangeable as causes or symptoms of the other: PTSD, TMJ, Scoliosis, chronic migraines, and early onset arthritis. I don’t feel like any of that demands explanation, so I’ll leave it at that. I won’t even get into the amnesia episodes and black outs; we’d be here all day.

Now you know the long-term stress of my early childhood, as well as the problems it caused. And how I have what my doctors describe as “a young soul trapped in a 60-year-old’s body”.

The question still remains: why? It does seem a bit unfair in retrospect that while I appear to be the average 29-year-old, and I look able-bodied enough, that is simply not the case. I attempted having a normal career, worked at various mental health clinics while getting my degree, planned on continuing my growth at higher and higher levels and eventually getting my PhD in forensic psychology. But, of course, working in behavioral hospitals comes with plenty of stress, and this not only compounded my already declining health issues, but I got hurt on the job so many times that the medical bills just weren’t worth it anymore. Now half the time I’m in so much pain I can hardly get out of bed to just do the bare minimum to keep the house clean, much less work a reliable and steady job.

I did get to a point, though, where I looked back on my life and saw a pattern. My body and my mind looked like they were declining at an exponential rate, and life events kept forcing me to slow down more and more until my life resembled what most people would call their retirement. I still try to work, try to find something that I can do to fill my time and help bring in some income for my family, and while it’s not much, it’s the best I can offer, and I’m satisfied with that. So now to ask that big question: Why me?

It’s a relatively common belief in spiritual circles that when a soul is preparing to live a life, everything about that life is designed. It’s not in exact detail since free will comes into play and not everyone makes all the decisions designed to lead them down their path in a straight line, but there are specific life events and experiences that are documented and fixed in time. In this way, we create the outline of our lives before we are born, and each event is designed to teach us something important about ourselves or push us toward the next item on our list, so to speak. Knowing this, we can answer the question “why me” with:

My soul planned for me to live out this experience with an ultimate goal to help me learn something valuable about myself. Or at the very least guide me down a path that will help me achieve something specific in this lifetime.

Now, the question evolves from “why me” to “what is there to learn from this?” or “what can I achieve with this?” At this moment, I’m not far enough on my journey to know the answer to that question, yet. Something I have learned, though, is there’s an element of surprise in life that even one skilled with divination won’t see the whole story until it’s time to. I’ve found this to be the energy of Jera working in my life—knowing that everything in our lives is all connected in one giant web, but its only in retrospect that we can look back and see why the connections are so important to the overall design. In other words, there are some questions that I know I’m not meant to answer for a long time. But, that’s why I figured it might be best to put my thoughts out there for others to read. I think if I inspired at least one person in all of this, it would be an honor, and that’s purpose enough for me.

So, if you’re also wondering “why me?”, consider what you can learn from your experience. In a world that is constantly bustling and moving, what can you appreciate about not being stuck in the rat race and instead given ample time to embrace the peace? Being forced to take care of yourself as much as possible isn’t the worst gig, after all. And if you want there to be some higher meaning to your life, what do you think you can do with the time you have? What can you create? What can you learn? What can you share with others? Who can you inspire? Whatever the case may be, there’s always meaning in a life. It may not always be predestined, but you can create it for yourself. And I think that’s pretty cool, too.