The Tunnel of... Hope?

It gets better.

Life may suck now, but it gets better.

I have a good, very sweet friend who sent me a kind message of condolence for my situation.  Then, after commending me for being tough, proceeded to say that she felt guilty for complaining about her lot.  In the scheme of things, she felt my lot was worse and hers was less (thus causing the guilt for complaining about it).  This gave me a moment's pause.

Don't feel guilty.  It gets better.

When I was in the thick of raising a toddler and pregnant with a second, I complained.  A LOT.  I looked like a beached whale, I threw up everything I ate and my son was a handful.  Sweet friends near me would tell me, don't worry, it'll get better.  And you know what?  That made me feel better.  

A few years later, I had two young boys and so many health problems it was scary.  I was facing surgery and I wasn't keeping up with my kids.  I was sitting in pre-op, trying desperately to not hyperventilate and completely scared out of my wits when a nurse came in to prep me.  She was bluntly honest.  She told me I was going to hurt, a lot, afterwards and recovery might be bumpy.  But I'd feel better.  Better than before surgery.  It gave me hope.

Just last week, as I sat on the chiropractor's table, wondering if my life was going to be forever spinning, living a half existence with a disease that won't kill me, but make my life miserable for many long years, a massive presence of a man bound into the office.  A man who is almost completely deaf and suffers from Meniere's sat across from me with a smile and told me... I'll never recover, but it gets better.  

WHAT?  

It gets better.

I may never recover, but I can put years between attacks.  It takes a lifestyle change, but guess what?  It made me feel better.

Don't despair, dear readers.  And don't feel guilty for feeling the way that you feel.  Notice I never said that I felt better when someone commiserated or pitied me.  I felt better because they had given me hope.  They'd been through the trenches and KNEW it would get better.  Knowing it gets better, that glimmer of hope, is a powerful tool against despair.  Is whatever you are going through hard?  Of course it is!

But it gets better.