(Today’s blog post is part of the Blogging From A to Z Challenge during which writers all over the world blog each day in April based on a corresponding letter of the alphabet. These are my personal stories about living with Trigeminal Neuralgia, the most painful diagnosis known to man.)
Drama. That word is getting overused a lot lately and it isn’t in reference to Arthur Miller. Instead it is something people say with scorn. “She’s got so much drama” or “I don’t need that drama in my life.” But here’s the thing…life without drama wouldn’t be much of a life at all. Sure we could all walk around glassy eyed and blunted like Stepford Wives, but would anyone really want that? The reality is we can’t know success without sensing failure. We can’t experience joy without understanding sorrow. And we can’t feel passion without experiencing apathy.
Sure, we could live our lives in some idyllic wonder world – a Xanadu if you will – but we could never truly appreciate it if we haven’t, at some point, faced hardship. Most of us will experience love and loss, good fortune and hard times, health and illness. It is that spectrum of the human condition that makes us have emotions to begin with. Granted, there are some people for whom every bump in the road is a cataclysmic event and that can be draining. But most people – at least those I know – persevere through even the most difficult moments. And those of us who have TN have our own unique mountains to climb. But we do it. And in some ways having those bad days makes the good ones seem ever so much more precious. I supposed that’s the silver lining to the Trigeminal Neuralgia cloud (and I know it’s a bit of a reach).
I tend to use salty language at times. And while “life” is on the list of four-letter words, “drama” isn’t one of them.
The Other Shoe 