This is an experience that I will not be forgetting anytime soon. Contemplating my experience with viral conjunctivitis.

     

Health is such a delicate thing. Once taken away can leave you completely blindsided at such little privileges you had taken for granted. Like being able to see clearly and function. The virus that had taken over my eye had left me in pain all day and rendered everything in a cloudy haze.  Then it spread to the other eye. I looked in the mirror. I looked into my eyes. I felt like a zombified shell of myself. My eyes were completely red and the side of my head had swelled up. My lymph node engorged golf ball size making it difficult to chew on that side of my mouth.  I had never been so scared and helpless; I downward spiraled into gloomy agitation. I couldn’t go anywhere, couldn’t really do anything that require too much eye strain, it was too painful and exhausting. Like a prison, inside myself. I finally stopped struggling and surrendered to heal on my body’s own time. Wandering in my labyrinth…What demons lay there undiscovered?

    Finally, after a week and a half the redness slowly receded.  Little by little, my eyes slowly emerged again, after being held hostage for so long by a relentless captor.  I am lucky and humbled. I’ve realized more tangibly in depth that  health is a proactive process every day, and maybe the time I’ve lost I hope to recover a thousand fold by being more mindful of taking care of myself and everyone around me.  Am I really seeing what’s in front of me? Am I really paying attention?  Am I really going to take it all in this time? Did I finally receive the message from within?