A Personal Reflection

It was 3:40 a.m. on a Tuesday.

My eyes opened before I understood why.

Something was wrong.

The room was spinning — not gently, not dreamlike — but violently enough that I could not orient myself. I needed to use the bathroom. Urgently. I tried to sit up.

I couldn’t.

I tried again.

My arms responded. My legs did not.

A thought flashed — stroke? heart attack? — but there was no time to reason. I rolled from the bed onto the floor and made my way across it the only way I could — slow, deliberate, ungraceful.

I have never felt so aware of gravity.

I pulled myself up in the bathroom and found relief. Now I had to get back to the bedroom. I moved carefully, stopping at the nightstand before reaching the bed. I pulled my phone down and voice messaged my daughter:

“Something is wrong. I don’t know what. Stroke? Heart attack? I can’t move my body.”

She said she was calling an ambulance.

The waiting felt endless.

I managed to pull myself into bed just as my body began vibrating internally — not shivering, not shaking — but humming with an intensity I could not control. I lay inside that uncertainty until lights flashed outside and I was carried into the early dark.

It was not a stroke.
It was not a heart attack.

It was something else.

A constellation of connected symptoms.

The diagnosis for me is Complex Sjögren’s. However, it could have been something else — my symptoms are not uncommon. One complication is orthostatic imbalance — a condition that can make the world spin suddenly when the body changes position.

It feels like those old playground merry-go-rounds we used to grip and run beside until the world blurred. We would leap aboard and surrender to dizziness for sport.

There is nothing playful about it now.

The episode did not end in the emergency room.

It followed me home.

In the days that followed, my stomach ached — dull, persistent, as though something inside me was recalibrating without explanation. Mornings arrived heavy. Brain fog settled in — thick as wool — thoughts moving slowly, then clearing, then thickening again as the hours marched on.

When I stood, the room would sway, sometimes violently, sometimes faintly. I was no longer alarmed. I understood what was happening. It became a constant reminder my life had shifted and the space I now lived in unfamiliar.

This was new.

New health experiences seemed to be arriving more quickly than I could adjust.

I tried to rationalize.

Perhaps dehydration.
Perhaps hormones.
Perhaps stress.

I tried to justify.

Others experience this.
This is manageable.
This is aging.

But beneath the reasoning sat a quieter question:

Will I find “normal” again?

Or is this my new normal?

Is this what aging feels like — not dramatic collapse, but a slow renegotiation?

Through the ages, women have awakened to unfamiliar sensations in the dark. They have sat on the edge of their beds, disoriented, wondering if the ground beneath them has shifted permanently. They have adjusted pace. Learned new language. Changed rhythm.

Today, I am learning to manage my life differently.

I am learning to rise more slowly.
To hydrate before I stand.
To rest without apology.
To listen when my body speaks before my mind understands.

Not every morning begins with strength.

Some begin with instruction.

The edge of morning is not just the hour before sunrise.

It is the moment when we realize we cannot live exactly as we did before — and must decide how to live now.

This is not surrender.

It is adaptation.

And perhaps that is what aging has always required of us —

not fear,

but adjustment.