"Without your health, you have nothing."

Without your health, you have nothing.

Without your health, you have nothing.

Without your health, you have nothing.

Truth? Lies?

If true I have always had nothing.

My mother used to tell me stories of my early childhood where my neck was lost in a mass of blood and weeping, broken skin, my chin stuck to my chest. Eczema, part of the genetic lottery handed down from my father. My grandmother used to regal we with similar stories about my father, although her's were more in terms of the cost to her, than to my father. Apparently we both had/are nothing.

As I grew, more problems arose. One minute I was running around in the paddocks with my friends and the next I was taken down by joints so inflamed that I could barely move. Pain a constant companion. Pills and potions. Lotions and bandages. Not yet a teenager and once more broken. Nothing.

The arrival of hormones ended with more pain. Surgery. Hips that escaped their sockets as I walked down the street. A uterus that couldn't keep it's cells to itself. A body that grew parts where they shouldn't grow. More surgery. More blood. More pain. Nothing.

The older I became the more surgery that was required. Explore and cut. Remove the offending bits. Take this pill. Try that one. Interspersed with periods of reprieve. My broken body still breaking, just in new and complex ways. Nothingness taken to new and interesting heights.

And now?

Now I am living with illness 24/7. Year after year. With full knowledge that it will never get better.

Is my life a collection of nothingness? As I move on knowing that I will continue to be ill, is nothingness all I have to look forward to?

Lies.

Lies told to us as children.

Lies reconfirmed in a society that seeks perfection at every level.

Such sentiments reek of the privilege of health. They reek of false lessons. They reek of false security and small ideas. "I have my health," is the new statement of prestige and success. Up there with a new BMW, or a mansion in Toorak.

The ill and disabled become inspirational for simply breathing, because others cannot understand how we continue on in a such a state of constant nothingness.

Avoidance of illness at all costs. If you become ill you have not tired hard enough to avoid the nothingness. You must be judged. You should judge yourself. Bludger. Lazy. Worthless.

Lies.

Illness doesn't care. It doesn't care if you run 10km everyday. It doesn't care if you only eat organic. Or have never smoked or consumed alcohol. It doesn't care if you help old ladies across the street or kick kittens for fun. Good, bad or indifferent. Illness happens. Disability happens. Life happens. Genes can kick in, or accidents can occur. Yet we have so demonised the idea of illness that we fear and judge it.

Advertising campaigns contrast the bright lights of health with the grey world of illness. They see joy vs despair. Friend vs Enemy. The Good vs Bad. A moral argument that is transposed onto those upon whom illness calls. And so we are told that, "without your health, you have nothing."

We set up our children to fail. We set ourselves up to fail. Illness is The End of the World. We catastrophise. We are no longer taught the lessons, that sometime life takes a different turn. That we cannot control everything. That sometimes shit happens. And, more importantly, that we can continue on when it does.

Those of us who face illness everyday. Those who must face their mortality. Continue on. They find a path. They find joy. They live. And they find their everything.

Nothingness is a choice. A choice we are taught. A choice we internalise. A choice that fails us. Health is part of the equation, not all. Health is something that we cannot always control. But a life without health is not a life without value. It is not a life without joy. It is still a life worth living.

There are trials and tribulations. Challenges and tears in the dark. Moments of despair and pain. But there is still life. Beautiful and musical, life. There is colour and song. It is as varied and miraculous as that of the healthy. It is simply different. But it is still life. It still has value.

To teach our children that without health we have nothing, is a crime. We set them up for failure. We set them up to judge, not only others, but themselves. As parents, as members of a global community, we must give them and ourselves the lessons that will best prepare them for life. That will teach them that value doesn't come from perfection, health or otherwise. How can we prepare them for life when we avoid or exclude such an important lesson?

Is it truly a surprise people fall apart when illness and mortality come their way. No wonder they/we struggle. We are so ill prepared for the concept of a fallible body, that we are suddenly thrust into a world of nothingness. Of no hope. Of fear. Of helplessness and hopelessness. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because that is the lesson we have learned. We have no skills, no training. Illness is so alien, so other, that we cannot conceive a way through it or a way to live with it. We have failed ourselves in our self-indulgent belief that we have control over the fickleness of life. By ignoring illness, we create our own failure. Where in truth none exist.

To accept the concept of nothingness is to accept that a whole, often inevitable portion of life is, nothingness. That those around us will experience nothingness. That our loved ones. Our family and friends will live in nothingness. And in nothingness their also exists meaninglessness.

Is that really what we want?

Do we want to write our world as black and white? Good and bad. Nothing and everything. So much is missed in such simplistic thinking.

Life is infinite variation. Life is murky and muddy and grey. It is shiny one moment and dull and tarnished the next. Sometimes the tarnish exists side by side with the shine. Juxtaposed and radiant. Beautiful for it's complexity and challenge.

Because even in the darkness of midnight you can look up and see the stars.

Illness isn't good and bad. That notion of morality is something we have imposed upon it and in turn, on those upon who it comes calling. The cells in our bodies have no such ideology. They simply are. We can anthropomorphise them. We can call up the metaphors of war. But they will continue on oblivious.

Health isn't an absolute. And it's presence, or lack thereof, doesn't define a person or the worth of their life.

I don't have my health. I have never had my health. But I have always had my everything.

And I wont sell a lie to my children.

Michelle