Not fighting

So much of the language around illness is an echo of war.

“She’s fighting XXX”

“He’s a XXX survivor”

“I won’t let XXX win!”

I get it. I feel like a fighter, especially on the days when Parkinson’s symptoms are overwhelming and frustrating and take all my energy. It’s easy to feel like I’m embattled, on the front line pitting myself against an unbidden enemy.

But that leaves me the loser. Always.

The other day, I had a realisation which felt far more creative than the ‘battle against disease’ trope. I realised I don’t HAVE Parkinson’s. I AM Parkinson’s. Or at least, I am my own version of this weird collection of symptoms.

Photo by Luis Gonzalez

Let me explain….

'If I ‘have’ Parkinson’s then the disease is a thing separate from me. It’s an arbitrary external presence that visited itself on me and my life for reasons unknown. Parkinson’s is a cruel and apparently random twist of fate. In this scenario, then, I’m always head-to-head with it.

But really, who I am is intricately bound up with this thing named Parkinson’s. I’m not defined by it but, in dancing with it daily, I have become intimate with it so that we waltz together as one. I have recognised its frozen face as my own, its anxiety as my own heart’s arrhythmia and its curled-up posture as my own fear about approaching the world with head held high.

If that sounds as if that’s a crippling realisation, I want to put it to you that it’s actually liberating. To dance with illness means becoming alive to all the ways in which my body speaks to me. It means I have to listen to myself, pay attention to my self-talk, catch the many ways in which I am unkind to myself and widen the path to loving myself, just as I am. It’s a daily practice, an hour-by-hour awareness and realignment to what is most loving, compassionate and nourishing.

So, Parkinson’s, my dance partner, thank you for your uncompromising lessons. I’m not at war with you. Come, let’s waltz together through this day.