It’s funny how sometimes you need to get bad news to get focus.

I say funny but it’s sad, really. I wish I was able to just know what I have to do all the time. The clarity to know where we are headed or just how we want to spend everyday of our life doesn’t come easy. After getting really scary news about my health I found myself with a new sense of determination and purpose. And I’m quite sure I’m not alone in this journey. When you remember your days are counted or you get a glimpse of the end (after a car accident), you suddenly realize what is really important to you and what is just rubbish. I remember a podcast where Tim Ferris interviews Cheryl Strayed: she says that she often thinks about death to have the perspective of what is important and what isn’t. I agree and I often do the same, but it is very different when you are reminded of your own mortality, or when you’re facing the end of the life you’ve had until now because the illness will change you forever (alter your body image).

First, I was devastated and in a way, I knew it was fine because I needed to let the bad news sink in and let them ‘hit me in the face’ in order to start to process/digest them. I felt that if I just continued my life as if nothing had happened I would have been denying the whole thing and trying to keep going as if things were normal. You know, the business as usual sort of life, right? I have to say it was very tempting: you just pretend it didn’t happen, or it happened to someone else and you push the memory way deep in your mind so it starts to fade away. I even thought: what if I don’t go back to see this doctor? But I couldn’t do that and every time I would think about what had happened, I would feel like crying, and sobbing and lying on the ground and drown in my sadness.

Then, little by little I realized that this was something I would not be able to avoid facing it (although I enjoy thinking that the next time I’ll see the doctor it would have disappeared), so I had to do something to get in better shape and start thinking of the after and how I can quickly get back on the horse and start doing more of what I love and less of what I have to. Sort of like finding a solution. I love fixing things and helping others, so this time it is my turn: I will fix me and help myself.

Finally, focus shows up and you just know what to do. You know what feels right to you. Even though I’m still thinking about some things I want to change but haven’t figure out how exactly, I know that I have to change them. And sometimes they don’t make much sense, they just have to make sense to you. I think that is part of the clarity you get: you see clearly what is important to you, instead of what is important to people around you and what they think you should do. I read recently an anecdote in Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. In the preface, he recalls how he decided to finish the books that make up the story of the Dark Tower and the Gunslinger. For some reason, after writing the first four books he kept thinking he would finish writing the saga one day, later, right? And then he had a car accident, a pretty bad one, and it dawned on him it was time to finish the story of Roland because he couldn’t leave it unfinished: “I’d always assumed that there would be time to finish. […] If the vehicle that stroke me that day would have been a little bigger […] Roland’s quest would have remained forever unfinished. […] As always, I did this not so much for the readers who demanded it as for myself” (pp. xii-xiii). I have to admit that it has already crossed my mind that I have to write all the stories I have in my head so I don’t leave them untold.

So after this short time, I’m sure it’ll keep changing as I go, I have the feeling that I’m on the road to healing and being healthy, and that’s a road I want to be in. On the other side of this terrible moments, I can see myself healthy again, writing my stories and sharing them as life keeps happening to me a little more on my terms than in those of external pressures and unforeseen circumstances.