Welcome 2021

It's a pale, miserable face looking back from the mirror over the sink. The sparkly dress I have put on in an attempt to feel a little glamourous only adds a stark contrast. It's New Year's Eve and I can't wait for 2020 to be over. It was the year covid-19 came. The year I fell in love with the wrong man, who fell in love with someone else. The year I had 3 attempts to get pregnant in Denmark, and came home empty handed. Well, maybe not completely empty-handed, since I ended the year with a Lupus diagnosis. My New Year's summary feels grim. There is no trace of optimism in my reflection. I don't recognize this pale, mute, sad person staring back at me. Piece by piece, I've been plucked apart, and I don't know how to put the pieces back together. The puzzle pieces I have been given no longer match the image on the box.

Almost 2 weeks ago I got the message from the doctor. In the blink of an eye my life has taken a direction I was not prepared for. Suddenly I have gone from healthy to beeing a chroniccally ill patient. I, who rarely get sick and almost never take Paracetamol. Now have a pill box(!), filled up with pills to keep my own body from attacking itself. 4 weeks ago I went up to the top of Bitihorn and skied down again. Now I am lying on the couch  waiting for the pills to work, so that the feeling of burning cement that's floating aruond in the upper body will disappear. I did not realize how much identity I put into being healthy until I became sick.

When a friend of mine told me a few years ago that she had been diagnosed with MS, I admired her for how well she handled it. She talked so calmly and casually about it, and I was impressed by her strength. As if she had dug deep and found gold. I'm afraid I will not find the same gold. I'm afraid I'm going to dig deep, and the only thing I'm going to find is bile, ice and nothing nice. The feeling of bitterness and unfairness is overshadowing the fact that it could have been so much worse.

But beneath the gloom and doom lies a small glimmer of hope. In a way, this has also been a  wake-up call. A realization that time and energy is a scarce commodity and that life is short. Do I spend time and energy on things that mean something to me? Am I living a good life? Is there anything I want to change? Can I turn this into something good? When the low is as deep as it feels now, surely the high that follows must be so much greater. I just have to get through to the other side of this.

​And January 1, 2021 is probably a good place to start ..