If you could choose two moments of your life to completely erase, what would they be and why?
Here I am again riding in this weekend experience car. I liked it the first time and I came back. The topics proposed this week are very interesting and all of them have a lot of material to cut through. However, I will stay with the first one, although curiously, I am not in favor of suppressing lived moments. Bad moments also deserve to be remembered, because they are part of the learning process called life.
I know people, so dissatisfied with their lives, that they would erase every single day of their existence. If any of them are encouraged to participate in this week's challenge, I recommend them to choose the second topic, as the first one sets limits for deletion. I have nothing to do with those people. While I haven't lived the great life, I'm not complaining about the one I've built, and I don't have a lot of things to delete from it. Someone may think that I am a guy with no ambitions, but I, who know myself well, tell them that up to this point I have met the challenges I have set myself. One thing is certain, I am aware of my sufficiencies, and I am satisfied with the goals that they allow me to achieve.
I have taken my time to choose the two moments that I would gladly pass the rubber. Especially because one of them touches very sensitive fibers within the family.
Let's start by respecting the chronological order in which they happened.
I would start by erasing the moment when my youngest child was born. I can imagine your astonished face when you read this confession. Now I will explain why. It has nothing to do with my son per se. He was a very wanted child for the whole family, and we were very happy to have him among us.
I chose to erase that moment so that it will happen again, but in a different way, so that my son can make the dreams that fill his head come true. Almost 23 years ago, when he came into the world, he did so with very little weight, so he was diagnosed as a IUGR. A very well cared for pregnancy became complicated in the final stage and caused a restriction in his growth inside the uterus. Because he was so weak, his strength was not enough to be able to feed due to the reflex that every baby uses at birth. This condition caused hypoglycemia that left his brain in formation without nourishment. At the age of two, when we took him to the neurology office, the doctor gave us the bad news. My son had suffered irreversible brain damage and would have to live with certain limitations.
If I want to erase that moment, I don't do it for myself. I do it so that my son does not suffer the rejection that society makes in the face of differences. When we experience it up close, we become very sensitive to the pain of being valued as inferior. As for me, I feel I have learned to look at disability differently, and I don't want to erase that from my life.
Let's move on to the second moment that I would completely erase.
A few years ago, after frequent visits to the gastroenterology office, I was diagnosed with chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), of non-specific cause. In general, I consider myself a healthy person. Nearing my 60th birthday, I have never suffered from an illness that required hospitalization. In fact, not a bone have I ever broken in my entire life!
I understand that the disease that afflicts me, compared to so many others, may seem insignificant, to spend on this one, the last of the two moments that I can erase from my life. But as I have already told you that I do not have many erasable moments to choose from, and I do not usually get sick, this ailment fulfills the conditions for me to include it.
When you are told that you have a chronic condition, you understand that you will suffer from it for the rest of your life. All you have to do is to comply with the medical indications to lessen the disorders of the disease. In my case, a fundamental aspect is diet. The list of prohibitions is so long that it would be easier to list what is allowed to eat. Honestly, I tell you that for me that is not the worst thing, since gluttony has never been one of my sins. If the rigor of the diet were enough to eliminate intestinal inflammation, everything would be very easy.
A chronic disease causes depression, irritability, anxiety and even social isolation. Being obliged to limits makes you reject proposals for social sharing, where eating and drinking are the center of activity. To sum up, until today, there are two well-marked stages in my life: before and after IBD.
This was just an exercise for the imagination. I actually think that life is made up of good and bad moments, and that is the beauty of living it. We would create a great imbalance if we could erase the moments when things did not go well.
My thanks to our host @galenkp who every weekend invites us to his home to share experiences. Thanks also to all those who accompanied me with their reading.
Original content by @leopard0
Original written in Spanish / Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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