Still? …ness
April is supposed to mean something.
A shift. A thaw. A quiet promise that things are moving again.
Longer days. Warmer air. April showers turning into flowers.
The world waking itself back up.
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But for me, April was stillness. Not peaceful stillness.
The kind that hums. The kind that waits.
Waiting on results. Waiting on answers. Waiting on interviews.
Waiting on some version of news always haunting the horizon.
That is one of the strangest parts of living with cirrhosis. The disease is always waiting.
Waiting to progress. Waiting to stabilize. Waiting to surprise you. Waiting to see what your body does next.
And somehow, it makes you wait with it.
I have felt healthier this month than I have in a long time, which almost makes it stranger.
Because the world is blooming, and I am on pause.
It is that cooped-up-in-winter feeling, except the sun is out, the sky is perfect, and everything around you is alive.
And you are just spinning.
Sometimes literally.
Crying on a stationary bike, going nowhere, trying to convince yourself that movement still counts.
I am still trying to figure out what it means to make the most of a time like this. A life like this.
Because it is incredible. And heavy. And confusing in a way that does not have clean edges.
There are days when I feel grateful to still be here
and furious that “here” requires this much management.
There are days when I feel strong and trapped at the same time.
There are days when stability feels like a gift, and other days when it feels like a waiting room with better lighting.
That is the part most do not always understand about chronic illness.
It is not only the crisis moments.
It is the in-between.
The monitoring. The appointments. The lab work.
The careful optimism. The way good news still comes with footnotes.
You learn to live in a constant state of maybe.
Maybe things are better. Maybe they are just quiet.
Maybe this is stability. Maybe this is the part before the next thing.
And still, life keeps asking you to participate.
So you do.
You answer the emails. You show up for the interviews.
You make the appointments.
You take the walk, or you get on the bike, or you do whatever small version of movement your body allows that day.
You keep going, even when it feels like going nowhere.
But here is the part that keeps catching me off guard…
I am not the only one here.
There are thousands of us living this exact rhythm.
This waiting. This strange, suspended in-between.
This life where everything looks normal from the outside, while underneath, your existence has been reorganized around uncertainty.
And somehow, that makes something impossible feel shared.
It is a remarkable thing to stop having remarkable thoughts about the thing that once consumed your entire life.
Not because it does not matter.
But because you are not alone in it anymore.
Even when you physically are.
So thank you for being part of this.
For making something isolating feel like community in its truest form.
Thank you for an amazing April.
