I feel like the end of summer. Where the sun fades quickly and is more stubborn to rise in the morning. Where a jacket feels nice on the way into the office, but I wouldn’t dream of wearing it on the way home. The drying of the leaves from bright green to a subtle hint of gold. The season’s flowers doing one last roar of life before they are cut away. First the fireflies leave, and soon the hummingbirds will follow. Everything starts to slow down—everything except the katydids, at least in my area of the world, where they just grow louder. Their chorus is peaceful, albeit a swan song for the season’s end.

This year, I feel like I am the season itself. Once bright and full of life, I feel myself growing older… quicker than my siblings, friends, colleagues…

I can tell I’m not walking as fast or as far. Going from not singing as clearly to not singing at all. (My goodness, I had a beautiful singing voice once.) My thoughts are like fireflies that I try to keep in a jar. But they get lost in the chaos of multitasking—writing things down on sticky notes, trying to remember brief messages, setting aside to-do lists, forgetting where I put my reading glasses. My thoughts fade like the glow, passing with the evening, until all I can remember is that I was thinking about something, but I am resigned to the fact that I won’t remember what.

So much is changing. And I can’t keep up with it all. I’ve always been a bit emotional, but now it seems the smallest of things will make my eyes brim with tears. I try to hold them back, but they usually fall… and, to be honest, it feels good when they do.

I had known for a while that I had Parkinsonism. I had known for a while that I had dystonia. But never in my life did I think I would see the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

My MDS had told me that it was on her radar. And for three years, my L-dopa worked like clockwork. But then the motor fluctuations kicked in, and my dose became increasingly harder to adjust. In March, I printed off the note from my MDS appointment, with “Parkinson’s disease” staring back at me… still warm from the printer, as I sat alone on my living room floor.

“Parkinson’s disease, dystonia predominant,” is what she wrote.

Still a unicorn (her words), I have had a unique journey to getting an accurate diagnosis. A genetic wonder, I have no family history and a rare gene that is highly familial in nature. But so far, it’s just me who has it. And while I am genuinely comforted by my family, I can’t help but feel isolated by it all… sometimes as deep as, “What went wrong with me?”

I have struggled recently to find the meaning in it all. I’m pretty good at finding gratitude, but meaning can be an entirely new thing. I can be grateful all day long, but to know one’s purpose… I suppose right now, that leads to unfinished sentences.

I’m at an inflection point. Where summer meets autumn. Where the leaves burst with color only to fall against the dark gray sky. A mixture of moods and colors and rushing winds… unpredictable and ever-changing, but still consistent. The days falling away like being crossed off a calendar.

I’m genuinely trying to find my “new” purpose by starting again. Letting go of what I can’t control and holding on tight to what I can.

Tonight, I asked a good friend to take a pastel class with me. Maybe I will find new activities to replace the old ones, the things that are leaving me. Maybe it won’t be as painful if I can fill the gap with something new, something that I created. Something I can call my own.

For, just as the seasons change, I will have to adapt to the new life that I am experiencing. And I’m sure it will have its dark days. But spring will come around again, leaving space for new things to grow.

While the last several years have been an uphill climb, I wonder who I would be if I hadn’t had to face such adversity. We all must adapt in our own way to our own unique needs. And by accepting those changes, we leave space for the sun to peek through once more, when the time is right, and the living of Life begins again.

For me, this will take time. But for now, I will try to enjoy what I have in these last days of summer, watching our sun sink below a horizon I cannot see, ushering in a new day that I cannot fully plan for.

We all have pain.
We all have fear.
We all have struggles that seem unbearable.

But with time, and the love of those around us, we can see the light left behind in the wake of those mountains that were once too enormous to climb.