SomnusNooze
All I can say is my admiration for those that suffer with idiopathic hypersomnia (IH) is truly immense. I love an IH sufferer, and even though she fights every day just to participate and contribute, she still shares humor and kisses like smuggled chocolate drops in a dreary math’s lesson.
Some days you can see the drugs are in slow mo, and all you want to do is wrap your arms around her and pump her up with the normalcy of simply feeling awake. Every tomorrow brings fresh hope she will make it all the way to the end without a crippling migraine, or be slam dunked by a drooling sleep fest, stealing away her hard-earned achievements… Or worse still… a cruel and soul-destroying comment from an ignorant and narrow-minded baboon stewing in his ungrateful and wasted soup of well-being. Stupidly, he mistakes her for lazy, slow, or disconnected, having no idea that he has just had an encounter with a rare warrior—one who wins and conquers life one precious moment at a time in a world where whole years are abandoned and forgotten. She, so young, has learnt how to manage a bigger load, invisible to the untrained eye, with finite stamina, measuring routine activities carefully with brave grit and frowned-faced fortitude.
Yet, as I watch her slow drunkard-like stance, slowly mobilizing each muscle to reach vertical every morning, I no longer feel that dark despair and loss. I am now infused with hope, amused and bewildered by how love curled by pain for so long can march you back up a cranky forgiving road to welcome in our new norm. Two adult women, cradling acceptance and insistence, seesawing between the two, me and her, mother and daughter.
Anonymous Supporter