After Chronic Illness Changes the Road, the Stories Will Still Be Told

After Chronic Illness Changes the Road, the Stories Will Still Be Told

By:  a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

This latest stretch of medical complications and enforced rest has brought on something of an existential crisis.

The nerve damage I have lived with since "the accident"—peripheral neuropathy that once seemed largely confined to the left side of my body—appears to have progressed. It is now affecting both arms and my shoulders, making even ordinary tasks more difficult. Sitting at a desk hurts. Holding my arms in position long enough to type becomes exhausting. Working comfortably for the length of time required to research, write, edit, format, and publish something online remains an ongoing challenge.

The physical problems are frustrating enough. The larger problem is what they seem to mean.

For years, I have thought of myself as a wandering storyteller. I traveled to overlooked places, followed old roads, wandered through cemeteries, stopped at historical markers, photographed forgotten buildings, and tried to understand the lives that had unfolded there. The wandering was not merely something I did. It became part of who I believed I was.

Lately, however, I have had to face the possibility that wandering, at least in the form I once knew it, may be a thing of the past. There may be fewer long drives, fewer spontaneous detours, and fewer afternoons spent walking through unfamiliar towns with a camera in my hand. Every trip will now require more planning, more assistance, and considerably more recovery afterward.

Rather than accepting this, I have spent a great deal of time trying to work out the impossible: how to continue living exactly as I did before while inhabiting a body that no longer agrees to the arrangement. It has not gone well.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes when the person you understand yourself to be is no longer the person your circumstances allow you to remain. It is more than disappointment. It is an identity crisis. When the work that gave your life shape becomes difficult, or perhaps impossible, it is easy to wonder whether any of it mattered. You begin asking questions that go far beyond the immediate problem.

Who am I if I cannot do the thing I believed I was meant to do? Was my work important, or did I merely need to believe it was important? Does the world notice when one more small voice becomes quiet? Does the universe even care who we thought we were supposed to be?

These are uncomfortable questions, especially when there are no immediate or reassuring answers. The universe is not particularly skilled at offering performance reviews. Forgotten buildings continue collapsing. Gravestones continue weathering. Names disappear from living memory whether or not anyone is prepared to preserve them.

It has taken me some time, but I have begun to understand that I may have been mistaken about my identity. I am not merely a storyteller. I am a story facilitator. My work has always been about helping unknown stories find their way into the world.

In the past, I often did that by traveling to the place where the story happened and photographing what remained. Those travels will still occur, just not in the same way. But I have also searched through military records, cemetery registers, newspaper archives, old books, and family histories. I have read novels written by people without major publishers, marketing departments, or established audiences.

The method has varied, but the purpose has remained the same. I have always looked for stories that might otherwise be forgotten, overlooked, or never heard at all. That realization has helped me understand the importance of the work I have already been doing.

Everyday Patriot is filled with the names of men and women whose lives have been compressed into a few lines in a database—or reduced to a rank, a date, and a place of death. Many served in wars that have faded from public conversation. Some died young. Some were never recovered. Some received medals, while others simply did their duty and disappeared into history.

Writing about them does not restore everything that was lost. It cannot return them to their families or explain every unfinished life. But it says that they were here. They lived. They mattered.

My work with the Friends of Old Lick has shown me the same truth in a different setting. Many of the people buried at Old Lick Cemetery lived in a world that did not carefully preserve their stories. Records are incomplete. Names were misspelled. Graves were moved, lost, neglected, or separated from the neighborhoods and families that once remembered them. 

In some cases, only fragments remain. A name. An address. A spouse. A child. An occupation. A death notice buried in an old newspaper. Yet fragments are still evidence of a life. When gathered carefully and treated with dignity, they become more than data. They become a small act of remembrance.

Even Rite of Fancy has begun to take on a different meaning for me. I recently submitted the site to several book review directories and made it clear that I am willing to review independently published and self-published books. That decision was partly practical, but it was also philosophical. Everyone has the right to tell a story from their own perspective.

Not every worthy book will be chosen by a major publisher. Not every writer will receive publicity, bookstore placement, professional reviews, or an invitation into the literary establishment. Some people will write their stories alone, publish them themselves, and send them out into an overcrowded world hoping someone will notice. Perhaps part of my work is simply to notice.

These realizations do not solve every problem.

I still need a workspace that allows me to function without worsening the pain in my arms and shoulders. I still have to determine how long I can work, what equipment might help, and which parts of the publishing process can be simplified. There are days when I have ideas but cannot comfortably type them. There are stories I want to research and photographs I want to take, yet the practical process of bringing them into the world feels unnecessarily difficult.

I do not have an inspiring conclusion in which every limitation becomes a hidden blessing. Some limitations are simply limitations. Some losses are genuinely painful. Some things are just shitty.

There are roads I may never travel again in the same way, and I am angry about it. Pretending otherwise would not make me hopeful. It would merely make me dishonest. But wandering was never the whole vocation. The road was how I reached the stories. The stories themselves were always the point.

The ones I have already collected are still here, and others are waiting too, in archives and graveyards, in forgotten photographs, in self-published novels, in family memories, in neglected buildings, and in the lives of people whose names are in danger of disappearing.

I may have to reach them differently now. I may have to work more slowly. I may have to accept help, change my methods, and let go of the person I thought I had to remain.

But the stories will still be told. And, at least for now, I am still here to help tell them.

Love always,

a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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