This image speaks to my inner six-year-old.

When you’re six, the world is full of possibilities and other people magically take care of the logistics–food, shelter, taxes–that you don’t even know about. Dreams are the entire world.

When you’re 16, and struggling to find a drug that will work to control your ravaging autoimmune illness, it’s less about dreams and more about living one day at a time.

When you’re 26 and the magic drug that you found allowed bacteria to start eating you alive, your dream is to get healthy and off meds–and even that dream seems completely impossible.

Once health is achieved, only then can you start to dream again. Really dream.

I won’t say that I didn’t dream when I was working on my health (because I did). I won’t even say that I tried to work towards those dreams during that time (because I also did). But those dreams didn’t go anywhere.

Why?

At this point, I would posit that it’s because all of my body’s energy was going toward keeping me alive and relatively functional. There were no reserves for extras like creativity. (Not the creative act–art is fun–but the creative germination. Bringing a new thing into existence.)

Tonight, for instance, I am so tired that I can barely think. My body has basically shut down, including my brain and my creative abilities. But I think about this time last week, when I was banging out words on my novel and making plans for the future.

For the first time in my adult life, my health is under control to the point where I don’t have to spend all my energy on managing it. (Thank you, carnivory.)

Looking back to see how far I’ve come underscores how much I tried. Oh how I tried, but I did not have the capacity to succeed. It simply wasn’t there. It wasn’t possible for me to sustain something bigger than me when I didn’t have the ability to sustain even myself.

Now, the objective is simple:

  1. Continue health gains
  2. Acquire more energy
  3. Dream
  4. Do as I dream

So for those of you who are struggling where I was a few years ago. Don’t despair. Keep dreaming. Do the work to get healthy. You can do it.