What does fine mean?

People often say "you'll be fine"...and I will.  But I'm also not fine.  I'm also growing through changes.  Or is it just going?  Growth isn't assured.  I feel confident given my own self knowing that growth will come.  But growth can come from many things.  Right now I don't feel entirely fine.  I feel scared, I feel worried, I feel uncertain about the future.  And those are fine feelings too.  I feel supported, I feel loved, I feel fortunate I am where I am with the people (professional and personal) that I have.  And those are fine feelings too.  We, I, can have them both.

Perhaps I will be fine, perhaps I am.  It really depends what we mean.  But illness, and I say this from too much experience prior to this current experience, is a process.  One of ups and downs.  One of thoughtful intellectual inquiry and one of emotional depths that don't always have logical underpinnings.  

I know people want to believe it, do believe it, want to reassure, want to comfort.  But sometimes without even knowing the problem, we instinctively say "you'll be fine".  Yes, I will live.  But as I said to my doctor, health is more than survival to me.  I don't think there is an inherit mandate that just because a cancer or disease is gone that the survivor is fine.  I speak not of me, but of so many I've worked with who have struggled so long...often long after the immediate threat is gone.  Some people aren't fine.  And some people flourish.  Some people grow.  And some people, perhaps most people, do a little bit of both. 

My illness at 17 formed me, shaped me, inspired me.  I would not, I truly would not, take it away from my life experience.  I would not be me.  There are things I would take away, experiences in the past...but perhaps that's not fair, they shaped me too.  There are things now that I would take away.  Ways that the illness and predominately the treatments literally shaped my body, literally changed my cells...things that have lingering consequences 17 years down the road.  Fears that resurface though I've been healthy and off treatment for far over a decade. 

Perhaps years later I will feel the same way about this current illness.  Perhaps.  But right now...I don't want it.  I don't want the scar.  I don't want the radiation.  I don't want the pill everyday with knowledge that without it I would slowly fade to death.  I don't want it.  And that's okay.  Illness isn't pretty, though it can inspire beauty.  It can inspire insight and growth.  And it can inspire despair and pain, loss and agony.  Illness in others can trigger fear and loss in our own memories, in our own futures, and in our souls.  

I'm reminded of a book (which I confess I have not read but only heard an interview with the author) called Bright Sided:  When Happiness Doesn't Help.  I'm all into positive psychology, into hope, strength, and functioning.  And I don't mean in a philosophical way...I mean in a write my major area paper and dissertation about these things.  I mean that I assess and promote strengths in my patients.  I mean post-traumatic growth...but the thing about functioning in the midst of pain or of growing after trauma is that we must first acknowledge the trauma.  We must make contact with the pain.  We must first see it, greet it, shake it's cold, fiery, and unnerving hand.  We must accept the trauma and welcome it in and then perhaps we can see new perspectives, learn to live along side rather than in avoidant fear of it.  There is no time frame for this journey and no obligatory outcome--just perhaps an invitation.  I don't want to be fine.  I want to be me.  To be fully alive and flourishing...and no one gets there in one breath.