There is No Finish Line

Chronic illness has a way of exposing a large assumption we carry: that life is supposed to resolve, wrap up, reward you for your effort with some clean, cinematic finish line where everything finally makes sense. But there is no finish line here, not in the land of chronic illness. There is no moment where the body suddenly hands you a gold medal and says, “You did it, you’re done suffering now.” And that’s exactly the point most people resist. Because if there’s no finish line, then the game isn’t about winning, it’s about how you show up to something that doesn’t end. It’s about brushing your teeth when you feel like hell, answering a text when your world has shrunk to the size of your symptoms, finding some microscopic thread of meaning in a day that offers you none. But you can’t keep waiting for the pain to end before you allow your life to begin, you’ll miss the only life you actually have, the one unfolding right now, unfinished, uncomfortable, and still, somehow, yours.

Dr. Jeff Bone