So. Now what?

Last weekend I attended the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival, an event that is a personal highlight of my year. It is more of a concerted ritual than New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day, possibly even Christmas. It's a highlight because it is so inspiring and uplifting that each year I leave reinforced by the shared stories of adventure and being human in nature. It nurtures my desires to live more adventurously.

I've always had background dreams of being a sponsored outdoor athlete climbing, running, cycling, kayaking, freediving around the world, and being able to document my loves - be it geopolitics, environmental conflict, species conservation, anthropology or simply human connections with the natural world...you get the gist - through writing, films and photographs. 

National Geographic. Royal Geographical Society. The North Face. Oh yea, baby!

Living my dreams - freediving in Southern Spain, 2013 ©

When I quit my corporate career job in over-populated London after a disastrous relationship in my mid 20's, I did so because I was headed in completely the wrong direction, and both my heart and my body clearly told me that I had to stop this inane life of daily repetition. I knew what made my heart sing - see above - so I enrolled to do a Masters in Ecological Economics at the University of Edinburgh, one of only a handful of programmes around the world. This was a first step in equipping myself with the knowledge (and degree) to change the course of my life. 

The course was an utter highlight for me, I felt alive being able to live my interests, and I finished by writing my thesis on the economics of the illegal ivory trade and its biological effect on African elephant populations. I met lots of like-minded friends on the course, all of whom were more interested in sustaining a socially and environmentally just world in the face of looming capitalism, consumption and traditional economic world views. We were going to change the world.

EcoEco tour of Kenya 2009 ©
For a variety of reasons, including the economic downturn, jobs were scarce after we finished so for a while I was just doing some odd jobs and volunteering to keep some money flowing in and further strengthening my skill set. Eventually I got a job with a wildlife charity, managing staff and projects that brought kids into nature. Finally, a job I loved. 

With this new positive step I took others, honing a positive mind-set and way of life as I went along. I committed fully to pursue my dreams of becoming an athlete again, as first mentioned in my blog, Adapt or Die. I was well on course to living my dreams and truly living my life. 

Balancing with my friend, Nature - 2013 ©
Now, when you break a leg, for example, even if you had been reaching for a goal you know that eventually your leg will heal and you can resume again. My illness is really shitty in that there is no known "cure", and physical, mental and emotional exertion makes you worse. The ME forums and support groups are full of people who are, understandably, suffering without any tangible help from the medical establishment, many condemned to a bed-bound existence, or at best a limbo between life and death. I have yet to come across one story of full recovery.

Given my dreams and vision of the life I want to lead, doing all the things that this illness so cruelly prohibits, being diagnosed with something like this means that I am still in shock, still in denial, still unbelieving that my life is going to be limited for the rest of my living days. I simply cannot accept it, despite all the acceptance I am able to achieve with everything else. I doggedly hold on to the belief that this is temporary, that with my determined mind-set and grit I will be able to scale mountains again, run, cycle and kayak for miles, and be able to feel my brain at full speed once more.

Having left the EMFF with an even bigger infusion of inspiration and joy - and having accepted a challenge by super-inspiring adventurer Dave Cornthwaite to submit my first film to the festival by 2017 - I suddenly find myself stuck in a very deep slump. The experience has heightened my desire to go chase my dreams, but reality - at the moment - is smackingly and alarmingly the polar opposite. These polarities have come to a head and are at their most extreme, and despite knowing where I want to be and what I want to do, I am held captive. 

Will willpower and frame of mind be enough to conquer this particular mountain?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Out of control

Image
I'm sitting here with my laptop, trying to figure out what to write, and even where to start. I've been wanting to write something for the last few weeks, to try and formulate how I feel and express the many emotions that have been surfacing. An intensely dark period followed my last post Of determination, dreams and despair . The boundary between being confined by overwhelming illness and the prospect of some improvement is a delicate one. Improvements may appear minor to the outsider - for example being able to get up, take a shower, and make breakfast in one go without becoming breathless, having palpitations, and needing to rest - but for me they are huge.  The trap of overdoing things is still real, because being a 'doing' type of person means I automatically fall into my M.O. of going for it, even after all these months. Nowadays, this could mean getting up, taking a shower, making breakfast, and then something else on top - for example walking to the shop aro
Read more

Silver linings #1 - Mindset

Image
Apologies for the hiatus in posting; rather a lot has been happening over the last few months requiring all of my energy. I will be writing about it all. Thank you so very much to all of you who have been in touch in the meantime, offering words of encouragement and support, and thank you also for waiting so patiently for my next blog post.   When I was first diagnosed and struggling to come to terms with the sentence of this illness, I never thought I’d be writing about the positive things about becoming ill. I suppose that change in mindset has been exactly that: being so ill can facilitate, or even force, a change in how you think about things, so that the positive and truly important aspects of life become more apparent and visceral, and the unimportant things fall by the wayside, out of immediate focus. Before I was ill, there were many things I worried about on a day to day basis, making me a rather insecure and anxious individual. I worried about other people not th
Read more

Of determination, dreams and despair

Image
Last week I found myself praying, for the first time in my life. This was a very surprising experience, to say the least, as I've never been a "religious" person; "spiritual" would be more accurate. This need to pray appeared to be propelled by a deep and irresistible compulsion, coming from a depth of my soul that I find difficult to access normally. It's an experience that is strange to admit to.  I've done rather well taking things in my stride, approaching the obstacles in my path, making adaptations, staying focussed and positive, maintaining sanity in the face of the mammoth changes and limitations that have been forced on me by chronic illness. Yes, I've let myself have my down days, my angry days, my lonely days. But on that particular evening, I very suddenly and very viscerally felt this absolutely negating sense of despair that I could do nothing about. Apart from pray to the Cosmos, the Universe that connects us all.  It is glaringly
Read more