That was the prophetic wisdom A+ therapist heaped on me in our last session. We were talking about acceptance (one of my favorite topics and a practice I am amazing at) and she said “You have to embrace the suck.” My first response, and thank God I still have somewhat of a filter and did not reply with this response was, “Fuck you and fuck that.”

Who wants to embrace the suck? I would like to avoid the suck, dress the suck up and make it look pretty and less sucky, fix the suck, distract myself from the suck, etc. Basically anything but embracing the suck. Unfortunately, she’s right. Trust me, I wish she wasn’t, but she is. I have to embrace the suck and there’s been a lot of suck over the last two years and there are many days where the suck far outweighs the good and that’s just life right now. Trying to avoid it, dress it up, mask it, etc doesn’t make it any less sucky.

Lately, the suck meter has been a little off the charts due to vision therapy. I started vision therapy at the end of January and nowhere in the cute brochure did it say “WARNING: This therapy will make you feel like absolute garbage and send your body off the damn deep end.” No, instead there were just cute pictures and success stories. I know that I need vision therapy and I know that down the road it won’t be as hard as it is right now, but right now its really hard to find the motivation to go to weekly appts and do daily exercises when you know they are going to make you feel like you are on a never ending Tilt A Whirl Ride from hell.

Vision therapy has put my body in a flare which means all of my symptoms are exacerbated and my body can’t find a stable equilibrium and instead of embracing that and going my body extra TLC, I’ve been fighting against it. As A+ described, “You’re trying to pull an elephant and the elephant isn’t moving and neither are you.” In non therapy terms.. I’m too stubborn and it’s not doing me any good. My body doesn’t need stubbornness and bullheadedness my body needs acceptance and understanding. I can’t stubborn my way out of being sick.. if one could, I’d be cured by now.

So I am going to drop the rope tying me to the elephant and instead sit down and figure out how to embrace the suck. If there’s something in your life you’ve been carrying and you’ve been doing everything, but embracing it. Join me in setting it down and figuring out how to embrace the suck. In true therapist fashion, A+ didn’t give me a nice numbered to-do list of how one goes about exactly embracing the suck. I think embracing the suck looks, feels, and is a different journey for each and every one of us. May your journey to embracing the suck be a helpful one and if its not.. blame A+