livingcured

From a book I just started reading:

"The most obvious danger of disease is that you will continue over the threshold and die. This danger is paramount, and at some time it will be unavoidable. The danger you can avoid is that of becoming attached to illness, using it to withdraw from encountering yourself and others."

"A little fear is all right. It is all right to know that in a month I could be lying in a hospital bed asking myself how I spent today. Holding onto that question-- how did you spend today?-- reminds me to feel and see and hear. It is too easy to become distracted. When the ordinary becomes frustrating, I have to remember those times when the ordinary was forbidden to me. When I was ill, all I wanted was to get back into the ordinary flux of activity. Now that I am back in the ordinary, I have to retain a sense of wonder at being here."

"At the Will of the Body" by Arthur W. Frank

The first quote captures the sense of a no man's land, which is what survivorship, at times, has felt like to me. Not sick, not cured, wondering if I'll truly rejoin the land of the living. But that there's also a danger of getting too attached to illness, that it can become a way of life and framing one's experiences.

The second quote resonated as well. The sense that maybe I live better with a little bit of fear.