I inhale the sweet, woodsy scent of the new candle I purchased from Maison Louis Marie. It sits on my desk and flickers gently every so often, its light bounces off my laptop, vase of fresh flowers, and picture of me and Sam. The scent fills the room with a clean and crisp aroma, a mix of luxury and comfort. I lean back in my chair. legs stretched under my desk, and sigh. My heart doesn’t hurt as much right now. My eyes no longer feel like they are going to burst at any moment. My arms and legs and hands and feet don’t feel like thick, wet sand. In this moment, my depressed state has lifted. I am still sad about dying. I am still scared about surgery and recovery post-transplant. I still feel lost. But right now, I feel lighter.

The weekend brought on a pain I had not felt in a long time. I continued through the motions of life, but couldn’t shake the feeling. This unexplainable weight fully encompassed my thoughts and wired itself through my limbs. I didn’t feel like myself. My mind was blank but spinning. Thoughts of death bore into me breaking down the walls I stitched together trying to shield myself from the reality of life expectancy with bronchiolitis obliterans and life expectancy post transplant. I couldn’t find joy. I would sit and stare. Maybe a half an hour would go by. Maybe it was just five minutes. It didn’t matter. It didn’t make sense. I was numb with pain and fear.

And then today, the weight shifted off of me. I am still scared. The fear isn’t gone. But there is more logic behind the depression. Three years ago is when I started struggling to breathe. Three years ago I didn’t know what was happening. I was lost. I didn’t have answers. I nearly collapsed in front of the office (which layer on embarrassment while we’re at it, right?). My body remembers, my subconscious remembers…my present brain did not until I hit one of those eureka light bulb moments in therapy. Three years ago my heels were wounded and bandaged up, I was shuffling from here to there in slides in the snow, my skin was covered in coconut oil because my lichen planus was flaring up, and, as I’m not very diligent about applying the coconut oil, my hair also ended up being covered in coconut oil making me look like a drowned rat. Then, icing on the cake, I could not breathe. Quick pause – the “I AM” app just messaged me “I gain experience from bad days”. Agreed, but wrap trauma, embarrassment, fear, and hour long waits in the ER and various specialist’s waiting rooms, I gained a link in my subconscious to this time of year. Three years ago. And here I am.