My mind drifts back sometimes these days to a year ago. I mark the dates off in my head – this day I was out of surgery, I was in pain at hotel, I made it home to Montana, I was life-flighted to Seattle, I was enduring torture at the hospital, another day of hell at the hospital, falling apart at the hospital – and so it goes.

A year ago, I suffered mental anguish so severe I completely lost myself. There was no reaching out, no reaching in. Just opaque blackness at the bottom of a hole that was impossibly deep.

Despair does that. It isolates and destroys. There was no hope. No promise or even a glimmer that life will improve. I felt so wounded and punished I wondered what I had done wrong to deserve such hell.

Recently, I read something about how hard it is to reach out when you are hurting. It’s true, and it’s something you should know. When people are really struggling, sometimes the very last thing they can do is flag their pain for you.

Today, I am not hurting. I am (mostly) healthy. I function like a (mostly) normal adult. I work. I parent. I play. I have energy to exist in this world. More than that, I have done SO. MUCH. WORK. to recover the small corner of “normal” I currently occupy.

I am grateful for surviving. I am proud of myself for fighting. I am thankful the temptation of permanent solutions to temporary problems didn’t overtake me. Hear me when I say that being here, now, is a big deal.

With that, I am still healing. I am still recovering. The road is long and it’s a steep climb. But as long as I have air in my lungs and a heart that’s beating (and blood that stays on the inside of my body where it belongs thankyouverymuch), I’ll keep climbing. And so it goes for another day.

-Give Em’ Hell