On the sensuality of chronic illness

Spring has arrived, and I continue to learn that chronic illness is not entirely doctors and heartbreak. There’s something else too; a quieter current that runs through my days, the long swaths of pain having burnt away many of the things that occupied my attention, and leaving something so fundamental, so primordial, in their wake that I can only describe it as “of the earth.” 

When the insides are uninhabitable due to overwhelming pain, I must make my habitat in changing colors of the sky. In the violets and the dandelions. In the gentle rush of the stream. Not just visit there and appreciate them, but actually move my home into their home for a time. 

When the outsides are uninhabitable due to inaccessible social events, too-loud and too-fast talking and too-bright lights, I must make my habitat in the inner realms. Not just taking some breaths to calm down and then move on, but really make my home inside the vast inner dimensions. Visiting different realms there and staying with them for a long time and discovering the infinite worlds that live inside.

I have spent so much time feeling like my body and my way of being are undesirable and cut off from the sensual flow of life because of pain and illness. But pain and illness bring us into direct contact with our bodies, our minds, our spirits – which is where the flow of sensuality lives. Far from being cut off – my whole life is an unfolding ceremony of intimacy. Agonizing over what to eat that won’t aggravate my symptoms; having yet another unbearable pain flare; massaging my belly; stopping to sit and breathe and feel for the fifteenth time today – intimacy, intimacy, intimacy. Asking for help with tasks I used to be able to do alone – intimacy. Appreciating a warm bath with every cell in my body – intimacy. 

Sometimes people say that pain and illness are messages from our bodies, and if we listen, then we will be cured and won’t need to suffer anymore. That may be so for some people some of the time. But what if the very listening itself, regardless of outcome, already brought us into contact with this inimitable, irrepressible life force; this immediate encounter with the divine, the face of truth, the site of passion – this force that we are all seeking. In the listening itself we are at our most fertile; we are the heavenly scented blossoms, we are the violets pressing up through the ground, we are the graceful water as she rushes on, we are the trees standing tall and rooted. We are the praying sunset colors. How could we be anything other? We have never been anything other.