I thought two months of being sick would yield some insights. It didn't, really.
I put all my mental health machinery into trying to make myself feel better, but it didn't happen. I tried everything I knew - hoped, prayed, tried to forget, tried to distract myself, try to pep talk myself, relaxing, stressing, taking proactive steps, letting life run its course, asking for help, withdrawing into myself, imagine how things could be worse, cherish the little things I could do, commiserated, ranted and raved - you get the idea.
I couldn't escape that my mental well-being was tied to my physical well-being, however "mind over matter" I like to think things.
I also couldn't escape all the things that usually make me a high functioning human being ending up as the very things dragging me down in sickness. Specifically the motivation/drive to get the most out of every single day.
I used to not have that, but as I've gotten older I've become more and more grounded in the present, in engaging with the tasks at hand and the people immediately surrounding me. Abstractions I left for alone time, afterthoughts to a day well spent.
Being sick meant I was less able to engage. Less present, less focused, and no wonder, what with having so much less energy. And I was overwhelmed with all the abstractions. Why I am not getting better? When will I get better? What are things I'm doing/not doing that's helping/hindering my recovery? Every fearful question thinkable just swirling around and around in my brain, questions that no one (not even the specialists) could answer.
Every day I would inventory all of my symptoms to see if there was any improvement, and in my ups and downs trying different positive outlooks I stopped caring if those improvements were real or imagined. I was willing to take anything.
But then I thought the inventorying itself was damaging, and so I tried to "zoom out" of my life, out of the groundingly present details and into some kind of "bigger picture". I thought my frame of reference was maybe too small. That being so focused or "zoomed in" was good normally but bad now.
I never succeeded in any bigger picture. I'm not attached to any bigger picture of my life. I think that bigger pictures are just like glossy PR photos people buy into or those ideas that sound good in theory. But maybe the bigger picture is something that I need somebody else to describe to me, because it's something that I can only see outside myself.
I still don't know.