Granny Smith's Teachings

As I sit here and slowly munch on my granny smith apple, I begin to think. It's this simple. Eating healthy in a way that my body can handle.



It's not quite been a year since I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease. Said to be incurable and intolerable, it is. I am still to this day, 8 months post diagnosis, taking in the news. Experiencing life with a free flowing stride, and a simple plan to each day for 18 years of my life makes for a difficult transition into my new one. Here I sit, literally dealthly sick inside and still struggling to help myself. Struggling to help myself to regain what immunity I have lost in the past two years. It's so easy for everyone around me to say, "just do it". But, what little they know of my condition, my mentality and my suffering they are only trying to help. Not experiencing something first hand makes it 100 times harder to relate to. I try each and every day to explain my situation to people, for insight, and to release my inner frustration with myself. Months ago in June of 07, I dropped my medications and ventured to a natural hollistic route. With much success for one solid month I accomplished what I am looking to accomplish again. Healing. "Then why don't you do that again?" You ask. Simply obvious that if it works, keep doing it right? Yea...yet again, herein lies my struggle. My struggle to be the way I used to be, to be the way that's easy.



Forgive me for jumping around in my story, but, I have alot running through my brain right now.



So, maybe I am not meant to have an easy, carefree life? Maybe I am not the chosen one who gets some leeway in this chosen life. Maybe I deserve what I've been handed? Why me? All of these thoughts run through my mind every single day. Then at some point I come back to the thought... it could be worse. Ok...how much worse? Crippling? Yea, every morning. Life altering, yea every day at work. Emotionally unstable? Yea, a wreck. Physically straining? Yep, sometimes I feel like I've been in a fight with a semi truck. Ok, so I am not in a wheelchair, I have all of my limbs, and can speak to you with full coherence. Thank you God for that. I don't want a pitty party by any means, I just want answers as to why this is so damn hard. Why is it so hard for me to help myself? Why can't I think of my body and my health, my overall well being? Why can't I show myself that I love what I have? Have I become ashamed of what my body has become? Is that why I eat everything that I shouldn't for my own mental satisfaction rather than for my body?



You only get one chance at this whole life thing. Why don't I start now? I am 20 years old, with decades of life ahead of me. Why should I wait until I am in the hospital with tubes sticking out of me and lines run into my arms to get the picture?



It's because I don't truly love myself anymore. I've lost love for myself, and my well being, because life is no longer easy. Now, I have to work for my body, work for my health, and work for my life. Now I have to actually think about myself before others. Selfishness is hard for me, but this is not selfishness. YOU are who you are, so deal with it. Take on whatever rocks have been thrown in your path, and pave a road to acceptance. I want children someday, I want a family someday...I want a life someday. Now is my day to start. Now is my time to get a grip on my life. Now is the time to love myself NOW, and to stop reliving the non-existent. With many words of wisdom from my loving mother, and many words of strength and support from my boyfriend. I know that I can do this for me. I will make this so called 'incurable' disease vanish in my future. The words that I live by: You can do anything you want in life, it's all a matter of how bad you want it. I want it, and I want it now.





Thank you.