There’s a strange expectation that eventually, if you live with a disease long enough, you’re supposed to make peace with it.
Maybe even thank it.
Parkinson’s taught me patience.
Parkinson’s showed me what matters.
Parkinson’s made me stronger.
Okay.
Parkinson’s also made putting on pants occasionally feel like an Olympic qualifying event.
Let’s keep the relationship in perspective.
I can appreciate what I’ve learned without pretending I’m grateful for the thing that forced me to learn it.
That distinction matters.
Because somewhere along the way, we turned gratitude into another assignment for sick people.
Lost something?
Be grateful for what remains.
Having a terrible day?
Somebody has it worse.
Disease changed the future you imagined?
Look for the blessing.
There are days when gratitude genuinely helps me.
And there are days when telling me to count my blessings would make me want to count how many times I could hit you with my cane before somebody intervened.
Both can be true.
I love my life.
I do not love Parkinson’s.
I’m grateful for people I’ve met because of this disease.
I still wish none of us had needed to meet this way.
I’m grateful for the perspective thirty plus years of Parkinson’s has given me.
I would have happily developed perspective through gardening.
I’m grateful that I’m still here.
That does not mean I owe the thing trying to make “here” harder a fucking thank you note.
This is where I think people confuse acceptance with approval.
Acceptance means recognizing reality.
This happened.
This is part of my life.
These are the cards sitting on the table.
Approval would mean pretending I’m pleased about the hand.
I’m not.
But here’s the important part:
I can hate one card without hating the entire fucking game.
That’s where gratitude becomes useful again.
Not as denial.
Not as forced positivity.
Not as some inspirational obligation to find beauty in suffering.
Gratitude is simply refusing to let the worst thing in the room become the only thing in the room.
Parkinson’s can be here.
So can laughter.
Loss can be here.
So can love.
Fear can be here.
So can a ridiculous conversation with somebody who makes you forget for twenty minutes that your basal ganglia have been freelancing since the 1990s.
A good life does not require the absence of terrible things.
Sometimes it is built right beside them.
TODAY’S DEFIANT TRUTH:
You are allowed to love your life without loving everything that happened to you.
You don’t have to call the disease a gift.
You don’t have to thank adversity for the education.
And you certainly don’t have to wrap suffering in inspirational bullshit before you’re allowed to appreciate being alive.
Parkinson’s never needed my gratitude.
Life does.
And despite everything, it still gets it.
Live Defiantly. — Richie Pikunis