I don’t care what people say, home décor can affect your mental and physical health.
Last spring, I got a tattoo on my left inner forearm stating “Find the Beauty”. I placed it there to remind me there is beauty in every situation and it’s my job to find it. Not merely search for it.
I’ve told the story many times, ad nauseum for a few people, but the song “So Alive” by the Goo Goo Dolls cut through my very thick, dark wall of fear and anger in late 2016. I went to my first Goo show in Hershey that fall, and by the end of the night I was a die hard fan. Just like that. It was an amazing experience. The other fans are beautiful people. John Rzeznik is one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. Robby Takac is always pleasant, and his pictures on Twitter and Instagram show how fun-loving he is, even off the stage. He seems really interested in everything and engaged with life.
I chose to disengage with life in 2015, when the high and distraction of finishing the New York City Marathon despite my lung condition wore off. I was hit with severe pain in the left upper back, down the arm, and left chest area. I’d had weakness in my left arm on and off for a few years, which I now realize was related to the vertebrae in my neck. I was demonstrating proper burpee technique to a coworker on Christmas night. Two days later, I was plagued with the most incredible pain I have ever felt. By New Years Eve, I had been awake three days straight and my heart rate was in the 130s at rest, all due to the pain. Each day I was at the emergency room or the chiropractor; nothing helped. Finally, on January 5th I had an MRI. It showed moderate to severe arthritis with bone spurs impinging on all the nerves to my left arm. Nothing they can do about it either.
I was started on Gabapentin, which gave me a lot of relief. But the pain had sent me into a downward spiral. Like water as it gets closer to the drain, I had begun a much faster descent into the despair brought on by my lung diagnosis two years earlier. But I woke up at the concert and realized I hadn’t been expecting such a profound experience. Therefore, there MUST be beauty everywhere.
In 2011, I met Bono. It was serendipitous. So few miracles had happened in my life, this one blew me out of the water. Later, I realized miracles happen every day if I look for them. Only I would forget to look. And when diagnosed with my PH, I lost sight of them altogether.
The tattoo saying “Find the Beauty” will always be with me. But now that my apartment is cleaned up, I have chosen to decorate it with some of the prettiest things I can find. The nicest of my treasures have been the flowers and orbs I found. I got the idea for orbs from my Christmas tree: some of the balls did not have a Christmas theme, and were labeled as “orbs” or “spheres” in the catalog. I decided to leave the prettiest ones out, and I bought ornate bowls and baskets for them. They are placed in various parts of my apartment easily seen from wherever I sit or rest.
During my cleanup, I found several vases left over from flowers sent to me over the years. I bought gorgeous artificial flowers and stones, and put them in the vases.
All of this makes a huge difference in how I feel when I am at home. Finding beauty takes no effort behind my front door anymore, and I am more at ease.