For those of us on a recovery path from a chronic health condition, “fitting-in” was probably one of the first things we threw off. Over time, we have probably honed a sort of environmentally controlled bubble in which we carefully and mindfully live our own lives, peering though its glass bauble at everybody else. Along the way, we have turned down all the dials on the pace of life and shown that we can exist in a very different place to the rest of the world; whilst seemingly, seamlessly, coexisting with it. We have ear-marked our own dimension and dropped it into the reality of everyone else; only they are subtly out of sync with each other in ways that we clearly perceive and those other people only vaguely suspect (though enough for them to sense we are uncomfortably “different”). With our enhanced diet and our micro-environment made out of subtly different life choices to the throng, we find we can thrive for ever longer periods without being tipped over in that old way. But can we ever ditch the odd-ball lives we’ve built, go back to “normal”, do all the things other people do once our health stabilises without it being the snake-ride back to the start of the game? And (I have to ask as I know that I self-selected this life) what did I expect to gain from coming here in this format, at this time when every personal victory of improvement is so conditional on where I am and the choices I make, moment to moment, mouthful to mouthful, environment to environment? Why live in a time of just so many choices and feel like they are all on display behind a sheet of bullet-proof glass so that I can see but can’t touch them; to have them already filtered and chosen for me by what my biology can cope with before it tips over into pain?

“Fibromyalgia”, after all, is just shorthand code for “not designed for this world”, a label for being a misfit at a very deep biological level; but not because we are faulty but because the world isn’t ready for us yet or, you could say, we arrived early. It’s a bucket title for those who are way too super-sensitive to cope with how things currently are, being calibrated to another time-space, and so we become systemically floored, like fish out of water gasping for breath. Its something we learn to be accepting of, to tolerate, which we manage to do…most of the time though at others it makes us sad, like a deep and innocuous feeling of homesickness. So we adopt the stiff upper lip and we try to get back to the job…our job in this life…whatever that is; yet even a sense of our core purpose in life can flounder at these times.

I’m left with this; perhaps I really am some future version of myself, from a world where I am perfectly calibrated for my environment and the frequency of the people who live there. Perhaps I’m a preview of a future model, with features that don’t yet sync with the way the world is. I am the one I’ve been waiting for, fully calibrated for a future reality and its time I welcomed myself thus. Perhaps my non-compute at the bland reception of all that I am here is the very communication breakdown between two peoples that makes at least one half of that dialogue (me) try so very hard to forge paths of communication that those listening out for a sign might start to hear if I just keep trying to refine my methods of speaking what I know. Perhaps the extent to which I feel the misfit, noting the “rub” between this reality and another one that I perceive being held out there in potential, creates the friction of desire that serves like the tyre on the road; the very thing creating traction to get me and others like me from one reality to another. Perhaps the relentless motivation by impulses that have nothing to do with personal gain and everything to do with making the path easier, quicker and more direct for others is how those like me demonstrate that future reality in action (since, you could say, it is fuelled by love). Perhaps it is the ceaseless desire of those in recovery from chronic health issues to keep moving optimistically towards a more comfortable, heart-centred reality where we biologically thrive, showing others how it is all done by focussing on meeting our own needs, creating our own best environment, making our own most discerning choices at every turn, is one of the ways that we help fuel the evolution of a planet…and this is our contribution, which is enough.

Modified extract from my Out of this world on Living Your Whole Life.