I think I love Rocky because there are so many identifiable moments throughout the series between his fight and my own. We both grew up poor. We both grew up uneducated. We both grew up knowing we were meant for one purpose. And we both exhausted ourselves trying to accomplish our goals.
Though I never knew glory or fame, true love or immortalization in marble, and though I never got my title shot, I fought for it. And when Rocky falls practically lifeless in Moscow to his knees, I felt it.
One of the most unbearable symptoms of most autoimmune conditions is chronic fatigue. Let me break that down for you. Chronic-persistent, continual, uninterrupted, unending. Fatigue-exhaustion, extreme listlessness, bearing little to no energy, lethargy, burnout. Still, all of the synonyms, definitions, descriptions under the sun can't prepare you for the depth of the feeling of actual fatigue. Right now, the only thing I want to do, is lay down on my floor and breathe. I don't even want to take the time to use the energy to get up on my couch. It's real. It's incredibly real. Hell I don't want to use the energy to process synapsis to think these thoughts to write these words. It's painstaking. That's exhaustion. That's chronic fatigue.
What happens to those of us with autoimmune conditions who suffer from the symptom of chronic fatigue? Multiple life altering, sometimes, life-simplifying, effects. We go fewer places. This can be good or bad. When we do go places, we tend to stay for shorter periods of time, and prepare for the event ahead of schedule, knowing that we must maximize our time there, even if it is just the grocery store, or a three day mini-vacation. So when we have energy, we schedule, or we budget, or we maximize our efforts on a grand scheme; or what you "normie's" call, life.
Often times, we don't sleep well. What? You're exhausted but you don't sleep well? Yes. It has happened to all of us at some point. We have drained ourselves to the point that our bodies are in pain and so we just can't sleep. We are painfully deprived of sleep, and we physically know it. Whether we have ran the kids to practices for three weeks straight in the summer time, or it's back to school and we're in crunch time, or it's "pseudo-vacation" and we do everything but relax because we're trying to see everything in this new, exotic place, or we have a sick relative who we have to run to doctor appointment after doctor appointment and then care for when they are finally at home and we just have no time for ourselves and when we do we just collapse and then there is nothing. You can't rest. You can't get comfortable. You can't wind down. You can't find mental peace. Where is it?!?! I need it, I know I do, my legs, my back, my...everything is begging for it, please. Nothing. That's Rocky, falling to his knees, getting wrapped in the American flag, dripping in sweat, one eye open, witnessing change in the Russian people-kind of exhaustion. Yes, it's for terribly different reasons, but imagery is imagery.
As I mentioned, with this exhaustion, there is pain. We're whipped. We're beaten. Fineto. Cianuro muchacho, I am done. Rocky I, "There ain't gonna be no rematch," "Uh-uh, no way, don't want one." The dialogue between Apollo Creed and Rocky after their first fight. Fifteen rounds of brutality between two, two hundred pound men bludgeoning one another, on purpose, to end up on their backs in the hospital. It may seem a little extreme, but it feels all too real sometimes. The pain that comes with chronic fatigue isn't imaginary, isn't functional; it's physical, and it's detrimental to our quality of lives.
Mostly, what happens to the lives of those of us with chronic fatigue is that we become fighters. We become our own Rocky Balboa. One thing I love about Rocky that not a lot of people ever focus on is the battle we watched on screen and never really paid any attention to, the battle he fought inside. Rocky became a respectable, reputable man, community advocate, father, husband, friend, patient, educated person, and honorable human being, all by being a fighter for his own life. No one else did that for him, and he did it all without anyone else watching. He did it without anyone expecting him to do so, without anyone wanting him to, and frankly, without anyone figuring that he could. We, as persons with odds stacked against us, have the need to become fighters, like Rocky, without anyone watching, because no one really sees the battle raging onward. Only we do most of the time. The fatigue, the lack of concentration, the pain, the stomach issues, the swelling, whatever it is that is going on with you today, may change tomorrow, and we all know that. They don't. So we get up. Exhausted, overwhelmed, sweating, looking out at the crowd of our lives, with one eye open sometimes, and we fight, hard, even if it is on our knees.
Though I never knew glory or fame, true love or immortalization in marble, and though I never got my title shot, I fought for it. And when Rocky falls practically lifeless in Moscow to his knees, I felt it.
One of the most unbearable symptoms of most autoimmune conditions is chronic fatigue. Let me break that down for you. Chronic-persistent, continual, uninterrupted, unending. Fatigue-exhaustion, extreme listlessness, bearing little to no energy, lethargy, burnout. Still, all of the synonyms, definitions, descriptions under the sun can't prepare you for the depth of the feeling of actual fatigue. Right now, the only thing I want to do, is lay down on my floor and breathe. I don't even want to take the time to use the energy to get up on my couch. It's real. It's incredibly real. Hell I don't want to use the energy to process synapsis to think these thoughts to write these words. It's painstaking. That's exhaustion. That's chronic fatigue.
What happens to those of us with autoimmune conditions who suffer from the symptom of chronic fatigue? Multiple life altering, sometimes, life-simplifying, effects. We go fewer places. This can be good or bad. When we do go places, we tend to stay for shorter periods of time, and prepare for the event ahead of schedule, knowing that we must maximize our time there, even if it is just the grocery store, or a three day mini-vacation. So when we have energy, we schedule, or we budget, or we maximize our efforts on a grand scheme; or what you "normie's" call, life.
Often times, we don't sleep well. What? You're exhausted but you don't sleep well? Yes. It has happened to all of us at some point. We have drained ourselves to the point that our bodies are in pain and so we just can't sleep. We are painfully deprived of sleep, and we physically know it. Whether we have ran the kids to practices for three weeks straight in the summer time, or it's back to school and we're in crunch time, or it's "pseudo-vacation" and we do everything but relax because we're trying to see everything in this new, exotic place, or we have a sick relative who we have to run to doctor appointment after doctor appointment and then care for when they are finally at home and we just have no time for ourselves and when we do we just collapse and then there is nothing. You can't rest. You can't get comfortable. You can't wind down. You can't find mental peace. Where is it?!?! I need it, I know I do, my legs, my back, my...everything is begging for it, please. Nothing. That's Rocky, falling to his knees, getting wrapped in the American flag, dripping in sweat, one eye open, witnessing change in the Russian people-kind of exhaustion. Yes, it's for terribly different reasons, but imagery is imagery.
As I mentioned, with this exhaustion, there is pain. We're whipped. We're beaten. Fineto. Cianuro muchacho, I am done. Rocky I, "There ain't gonna be no rematch," "Uh-uh, no way, don't want one." The dialogue between Apollo Creed and Rocky after their first fight. Fifteen rounds of brutality between two, two hundred pound men bludgeoning one another, on purpose, to end up on their backs in the hospital. It may seem a little extreme, but it feels all too real sometimes. The pain that comes with chronic fatigue isn't imaginary, isn't functional; it's physical, and it's detrimental to our quality of lives.
Mostly, what happens to the lives of those of us with chronic fatigue is that we become fighters. We become our own Rocky Balboa. One thing I love about Rocky that not a lot of people ever focus on is the battle we watched on screen and never really paid any attention to, the battle he fought inside. Rocky became a respectable, reputable man, community advocate, father, husband, friend, patient, educated person, and honorable human being, all by being a fighter for his own life. No one else did that for him, and he did it all without anyone else watching. He did it without anyone expecting him to do so, without anyone wanting him to, and frankly, without anyone figuring that he could. We, as persons with odds stacked against us, have the need to become fighters, like Rocky, without anyone watching, because no one really sees the battle raging onward. Only we do most of the time. The fatigue, the lack of concentration, the pain, the stomach issues, the swelling, whatever it is that is going on with you today, may change tomorrow, and we all know that. They don't. So we get up. Exhausted, overwhelmed, sweating, looking out at the crowd of our lives, with one eye open sometimes, and we fight, hard, even if it is on our knees.
Comments
Post a Comment