I Love Wet Socks

We all know that dreaded feeling when you’re walking in your cozy warm socks when all of the sudden, you step on something wet. The water instantly soaks up into your socks leaving your once warm and comfy feet surrounded by a soggy, muggy cushion. Nasty. Wet socks are the worst, right? The last thing anyone would want to feel is that awful wet sock feeling. Except it’s one of my absolute favorites.

WHAT? Yeah, I was one of those people who absolutely hated wet socks (like to the point where I’d not only take them off like they were on fire, but I refused to put on another pair until the dampness of my feet had dried up. Ridiculous? Yeah, probably). It got to the point where I hated how much I hated them. I didn’t like that something so miniscule could have such a strong influence on my mood or emotion, so I started purposefully stepping on wet things with socks on to get over it. Now how did it go from an obsessive disgust to one of my happiest, favorite feelings?

There was a point when I was especially sick back in February where by body was at the point of exhaustion that it would have random episodes of going numb from head to toe. It wasn’t like the numbing you feel when your foot falls asleep or the kind you feel from the dentist; it was completely senseless, like deadweight. Heavy, deadweight. I tried squeezing my thigh as tight as I could until I could feel something until I realized my nails were beginning to cut into the skin. The only way I knew that was from looking at my leg because I couldn’t feel it- it was as if my body weren’t my own. I might as well have been grabbing someone else’s body because I couldn’t feel anything.

The numbness spread through my entire body within seconds. It was scary to fall on the floor not being able to feel your legs, but from there, patches of my torso, my arms, and my head disappeared from me. It was when my face and throat went numb that the terror set in. I couldn’t feel my cheeks, my sinuses, the back of my throat was numb and the only sensation I had was a gagging feeling from the numb lump which was my tongue. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was making my best effort to breathe deeply, but I felt like there was no air going in.

"I thought I was going to die."

OH MY GOODNESS do you have any idea how terrifying that is? My body’s shutting down and I can’t breathe and we didn’t know why (fun fact: when we discussed this with the doctor, he had no idea what caused it, and there was no medication in my system at the time. We guessed it was exhaustion). I thought I was going to die. As I was lying there feeling my body slowly turning to deadweight, something crazy happened- I felt peace.

Of course, I was scared to death (pun not intended), but there was nothing freaking out about it could do except make it worse. “Life is full of inevitable situations, and we get to choose how to react to it”. When life puts you into the situation where your time might be up, they say your life flashes before your eyes. Maybe I’m just weird, or it just wasn’t my time to go, but I just had two questions on my mind: how have I spent my life, and how do I want to spend what’s left of it?

The answers came easily. Looking back, I know I made plenty of mistakes, but I didn’t have any regrets. I felt at peace with myself, even if I didn’t want it to be over, I was okay with where I was at and how I got there, and the only thing I wanted more was to hug my family and rest. It was at point where I truly understood the peace in the Plan of Salvation. Families can be together forever. I am so grateful for not just the belief, but the knowledge of that simple truth. In the face of the realest fears comes comfort and peace. It is not the end.

"How have I spent my life, and how do I want to spend what’s left of it?"

But there was one more thing I wanted to live to experience one more time. It wasn’t something like one more sunset or sushi as a last request. We started monitoring my vitals to find I was going to be fine, but when I wasn’t sure, I realized I love wet socks and I wanted to live to feel that again. Wet socks are like living, because sometimes it can be annoying and inconvenient at times; you may want to throw away your problems and wait for them to dry out and go away. But the cool thing is when you make the effort to work through it, you have the chance to overcome it and not let that control you anymore. You always have the chance to get over anything and there’s always happy in the bad.

So live your life in a way that if today were your last day, you would feel at peace. Don’t let your life be controlled by little negativities. You get to choose every day how you are going to live your life and what you will allow to control you- isn’t that the greatest gift ever?

#EhlersDanlosSyndrome #writeyourstory #wetsocks