It's not about me

Yesterday, I had a really, really good appointment with my new primary care physician.  We now have a plan for going forward, for figuring out what's causing this.  My pain is now firmly under control.  It spikes every once and a while when I overdo it, but I can usually just take an oxycodone, and it gets back under control.  I'm back in classes (actually in a class right now.  shhhhhh...don't tell the professor), and feeling like my normal life can actually resume.

On Monday night, I took a hotline shift (for those who might not know, I volunteer for the DC Rape Crisis Center and help staff their 24 hour crisis hotline).  Because I've been taking hotline for quite a while now, I actually felt fairly comfortable dealing with the two calls that I got (due to confidentiality reasons, I can't share anything about the actual calls).  But I think what felt even better than that was the fact that, for the first time in practically two weeks, I was able to completely forget myself.

I wasn't talking to these two people about my own present pain levels or my medications or my search for doctors or answers.  Instead, I was simply spending three hours of my life being ready to listen...and counsel...and encourage...and empower...and just listen.  Listen to people who, at that moment in their lives, had no one else in their lives who could just listen to them.  So I was that person for them.  And it had nothing to do with me.  It was all about them.  And it felt so amazing.  To shed my own problems and concerns for a while and just be there for someone else.

It made me realize how much I don't like it when everything is focused on me.

Because that's not the point of my life.  I dedicated my life a long time ago to helping people, to making the lives of people who have been through horrible trauma just a little bit better.  And spending the last two weeks just focused on myself has been in such opposition to who I am, and what I care about.  It's been so draining. And I really don't like it.

I understand people's urge to ask how I'm doing, to find out if I'm in pain, to ask how they can pray, to see where the doctors are at in finding an answer.  I get it.  And if I were in their shoes, I would be doing the same thing.

But I miss being able to just have normal conversations.  To talking about how other people are doing, how classes are going, what's happening in current events, or even about the weather.

I want it to not be about me.