Sometimes you have to reflect on where you’ve been to appreciate where you’re going. The view isn’t always pretty, but “scenic” isn’t a straight synonym for beautiful, kittens. In this case, scenic is probably a synonym for “way too long a story for a blog” and yet, I’m writing one anyway.

I’ve kept a story to myself and to my closest friends only for 365 days. But looking back, remembering the panicked whirring of my brain a year ago, I feel a pull. To tell someone my story, to offer encouragement that light shines into dark crevices, that the pendulum will swing back (and yes, back and back) eventually.

A year ago today, I wasn’t sure I would be typing today. I was in writer hell. My wrists had stopped functioning. That sounds really clinical. Here’s what it looked like: My wrists were so desperately, confusingly painful that I couldn’t pull my pants up without weeping. I could barely brush my teeth. I couldn’t hold a pen. My 120 wpm slowed to a hunt-and-peck through tears. Doctors tossed me some –itis words and encouraged rest. Tendonitis. Maybe bursitis. Definitely get that rest. I bought some #sexy wrist splints that mocked me with their ineffectiveness.

My glass wrists spread to my shoulders. I slept no more than an hour a night for weeks as I went from ice packs to heat and back, trying to stop the dull, constant ache of my shoulders and unable to answer Mechanic’s desperate “What can I do?” through sobs. Scalding-hot baths brought me temporary relief, but I couldn’t use my shoulders, arms or wrists to get out of the tub.

I love my job. I get to make words, professionally, and work with insanely smart people. My colleagues were unbelievably supportive (yes, supportive enough for me to use an adverb) and accommodating as I made a new decision every morning and sometimes re-evaluated midday: Could I function that day? Would another day of rest be the ticket to fixing this? They helped juggle the balls I tried to keep in the air with grace and love.

Mechanic started dressing me each morning. I couldn’t extend my arm to flash my parking pass in the garage. I shudder to imagine what I looked like, shuffling through the periphery of colleagues and acquaintances like a confused zombie. My best friend reminded me today of a dinner, a year ago at her house, when I couldn’t raise my arms to the table and shook holding a ladle.

Mechanic started cutting my food for me. Between doctor visits and frantic searching for answers, my hips joined the fight. I started doing a 1-2-3 countdown before climbing into my car, in bed, onto the couch, silently cheerleading myself into my painful next position. Every night, my sweet and priceless Mechanic held me as I cried and reassured me, searching for the right words to answer my whispered “I can’t live like this.”

The turning point came, as it often does, from a down moment: An emergency department visit after an eight-hour leg spasm left me unable to move my foot and therefore, walk. Mechanic pushed me into the department in a wheelchair at 5 a.m. It was one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had but it was a path toward what I desperately needed: a name for what was happening. A name meant a diagnosis and a diagnosis meant a plan and a plan meant a path. Out of what I was experiencing and into something else.

Rheumatoid arthritis. At 34. Okey-doke. It explains so much, anyway: I love dishes from the 1950s and like to go to bed early, so I’m an old lady at heart. And now I’m an old lady in the joints. Thanks to medication and a dedicated specialist (made possible by insurance I’m grateful to have—and that every American should have access to), I’m back to more-or-less regular life. Sure, I still have old-lady joints that give me occasional sass, but I can use them to live a pretty normal 34-year-old’s life.

A year ago, I wasn’t sure what my life would look like today. I couldn’t see a moment past my own physical pain, a sensation that was completely foreign to me.  But I was surrounded by people who made me put one foot in front of the other, albeit slowly. I don’t exaggerate a word when I say I couldn’t have survived those terrible, muddled months without my supportive, encouraging, never-give-up Mechanic by my side. His love–combined with that of my parents, who checked on me always; friends, who helped me laugh through the pain; and coworkers, whose grace and generosity brought me to tears–made it possible to keep breathing.

If you’re having a hard time, keep pushing. Know it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself, if you need to, but that better days will come. Know that you can overcome and that, a year from now, you will look back and feel proud of moments you pushed yourself when you wanted to lie down and not get back up.

Sure, I might have taken the scenic route. But here I am: a rheum with a view.

(Sorry. But hey, it’s my joints that are jacked-up, not my punny bone.)

Much love.