Celebration of Wellness: Where I'm at

I'm a bit late with the challenges for the Celebration of Wellness blog party.

Originally, this challenge was to create a time capsule to show where I am at this point in my life. As is becoming quite usual this year, my original grand plans ended up as something completely different.Originally, I imagined a box filled to overflowing with representations of the different aspects of wellness: physical, social, emotional, intellectual, environmental, spiritual, and occupational. Instead, I got the idea of Persephone's ascent from the Underworld stuck in my head, and painted how it related to where I'm at.

I feel like I'm walking my way up a million stairs to get out of the darkness, and into the light. It's rough sometimes, and for a good long while it was hard to imagine that there was something bright and beautiful ahead. Life gets that way sometimes. It's easy to get scared by the darkness, to begin to feel as though it's all there is. Like somehow the world got sucked into a black hole last time you blinked. Sometimes you manage one or two steps a day, sometimes dozens. Still, it's darkness.

Lately, though, I've been starting to see the end of the tunnel. At first it was the slightest lessening of the darkness. Now, I can imagine it as a world; all bright colours and fresh air.

You realise quickly that, even though you can see the outside world, even though you can imagine the feeling of cool fresh air, there's a long way to go before you actually get outside. There's still hundreds, maybe thousands, of steps to go, and the ascent is getting steeper each and every day. Eventually, though, it'll get easier.

It's like that, healing. I remember seeing on a forum once an analogy that seemed so utterly perfect. Healing is like being in a basement full of hot coals. It hurts, you hate it, but you're still scared to leave. After all, whatever is up the ladder could be so much worse than where you are. Change is scary, and even if you hate where you are, it's still at least a bit comforting to know it's twelve steps to the ladder and that it's half a degree cooler in the far right corner.

Sometimes, you go running towards the ladder. You decide there's nothing worse then where you are, and you'll take your chances with whatever is up there. But a metal ladder in a hot environment? You make it up maybe two rungs before you let go. It's too hot, too painful. Suddenly where you are doesn't seem too bad.

One day, though, you have to get out. Something happens that makes it impossible to stay, and you force yourself up the ladder. It hurts like hell, but you somehow make it all the way to the top. The next room is cooler. The next ladder doesn't hurt as much; each and every time you move forward, you're also moving further from the heat. Eventually, you're not even in the house anymore.

I haven't quite gotten away from the hardest part of the journey. But it's coming. An until that day comes where I step outside, I'm just going to be happy I can see the outside world again.

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