This time, last year, I was in a lot of pain.
I kept it private. Even though the evidence was visible in the early days.
Shingles. Wrapped around the left side of my face and head, even on my eyelid. Thankfully, not inside my eye. Ended up in the emergency room.
It was brutal. Not so much the rash, that was mercifully mild. But the nerve pain and hyper-sensitization. The slightest breeze against my scalp felt like an electric current being shot across my head. Every time I blinked, I was reminded I wasn’t okay.
Took four months and mega-doses of nerve-meds to wash out of me.
Thankfully, it did.
Hiking with a friend on the tail end of recovery, we were catching up on life. He turns to me and says, “dude, you’re like the chillest person I know, how’d this happen to you?”
Spent a lot of time thinking about that.
I’m not someone who typically buys into the age-old personal development trope that everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes bad or hard stuff is just bad or hard.
But, for some re…