"Why"

By Angelika Byczkowski

People sometimes ask:

Do I ever wonder why?
 

When I was still invincible,

my shining star still on the rise,

my future still unscathed and bright,

anything seemed possible.

Anything but this.

A cosmic roll of the genetic dice

comes into play and shows its face:

I'll be living in pain the rest of my days. 

Do I ever wonder why?

They ask this, not I.

For me, such questions don't apply.

I've accepted and adapted,

adjusted to a life with pain,

asking nothing of the future,

giving up my yesterdays.

I've been changed and the world is changed,

my altered view sees everything new.
 

Perhaps there'd been a danger

of complacency, a lazy habit

of ease unearned, a passiveness,

a willingness to go along.
 

Perhaps life was becoming stale,

perilously smooth and tame,

hazardously even-keeled,

and dangerously boring.
 

Perhaps my life would have remained

inadequate, unchallenged,

never having fully grown

to its frightening potential.
 

Why did this fate befall me?

Well, it did and that is that.

And when I stopped resisting,

allowed the change,

it changed me.

Why not?

Angelika Byczkowski suffers from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia. Until she was disabled by progressive pain and fatigue, Angelika was a high tech IT maven at Apple and Yahoo. She lives in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains with her husband and various four-legged kids.

When pain isn't keeping her flat on her back, she spends her limited energy researching and blogging about chronic pain, EDS, and fibromyalgia at EDS Info.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories (and poems) with us.  Send them to:  editor@PainNewsNetwork.org.