Third Writing Prompt

9/2/2014

Write about a difficult time in your life during which your spiritual beliefs sustained you – or didn’t sustain you. Did that experience increase your devotion? Or, if you did not feel sustained, cause you to question your beliefs? Write about the long-term effects of this experience on your spiritual life.

I don't have spiritual beliefs, so this situation isn't something I can totally relate to.

There was a particular time in my life that my will to live was tested and strained. While I was in my freshman year here at Lycoming and during the summer after it I began to feel the onset of immense pain. The pain felt like being stabbed by hot knives at various points all over my body. The worst places were joints and my forearms. During this period I also noticed an increase in my migraine headaches. These two vexations were very alarming, stressful, and more painful than I could handle.

When I started seeing doctors about this problem, it began a long run around from specialist to specialist, with out a solution, cause, or even giving it a name. I was given some low dose, generic treatment drugs that did little other than make me tired. After a while of crossing possible disorders and diseases off of the list the doctors pretty much concluded that it must be fibromyalgia. They told me it had no cure and it would probably get worse. The best they could offer me was Lyrica to lessen the daily pain.

With this happening, and also sustaining numerous concussions I was in a desperate state. Like I said, I had lost the will to live. I saw death as the only remedy. I was pretty close to commencing that final action when I did some deep thinking. I thought of my family, my love for them and their love for me and the pain my death would cause. I also thought about the far off chance of being reincarnated and having to go through elementary and high school all over again. I decided that I had gotten this far and it'd be stupid to throw my progress away. Conceding defeat would also mean letting the disorder I have win.

So clearly I haven't killed myself and feel dumb for even considering it. I don't think of death much and I'm now more focused on getting the most out of this life. My days are full of pain and it really blows, my hope is that Pennsylvania gets it's head out of it's ass and legalizes medical marijuana because it helps more than any of the pills I have and doesn't have much in the way of side effects.