What Three Stone Steps Taught Me About Chronic Illness Avoidance

I was standing on a path staring at three stone steps as if they had developed opinions about me personally. Three steps, not a cliff, not a hospital corridor, not a doctor walking in with that careful face doctors use when the news is about to get expensive emotionally. Just three ordinary stone steps, sitting there in daylight, minding their own business, while I stood there realizing I had somehow turned them into a recurring problem in my head. Hello, and welcome to Surviving Chronic Illness, life in a body that rebels. I'm Tate. Today I'm talking about the small things we quietly start avoiding and what those tiny detours can reveal about fear, adaptation, illness, and the way our lives can shrink without making much noise. A line popped into my head while I was standing there. I've said it before, or at least I think I have. The line was something like, What challenges you will meet you again if you keep walking around it. Now, I'd love to claim that as my own brilliant wisdom, polished and preserved in my mind like a fancy plaque, but my memory has been through years of medication, stress, appointments, and whatever else my brain has decided to file under miscellaneous chaos. So maybe I said it. Maybe somebody else said it first. Maybe some tired grandmother said it while I was stirring soup and wondering why everyone in the house suddenly forgot where the dish towels lived. Whoever gets credit, the point was irritatingly useful at that exact moment. Because I had been avoiding those steps. And I don't mean I had made one smart choice on one tired day. That would have been fine. I am fully in favor of smart choices. I support ramps, elevators, benches, pacing, sitting down, stopping before the body stages of protest, and refusing to treat every inconvenience like a character building exercise. I'm not trying to become the patron saint of unnecessary struggle. But this was different. This wasn't one tired day. This had become a route. I had built a workaround so smoothly that I stopped recognizing it as a workaround. I would approach that section of the path and choose the longer way around. No big announcement, no dramatic pause, no internal speech about fear or courage or whatever soundtrack people imagine goes with personal growth. I just went around. Then I did it again. Then again. After a while it stopped feeling like a decision. It became part of the map. That's where chronic illness gets tricky. Because so much of surviving it depends on learning how to adapt. You learn what your body can handle. You learn what it costs to do ordinary things. You learn when to push, when to pause, when to let the laundry sit there judging you from the basket like it pays rent. You learn which entrance has fewer stairs, which chair has arms, how far the bathroom is, whether there's somewhere to sit, and how much talking you can do before your breath starts packing a tiny suitcase and threatening to leave. That kind of adaptation is not failure. That's survival. But adaptation can get sneaky. It can start out as wisdom and quietly turn into avoidance. Not all at once, not with a giant flashing sign. It happens in small decisions that seem reasonable, a different path here, a postponed phone call there, a task saved for tomorrow, than tomorrow's tomorrow, than some vague future version of yourself who is apparently healthier, calmer, better organized, and has excellent upper body strength. I know that version of myself well. He's very ambitious. He also never shows up. So there I was, looking at these three stone steps, and what annoyed me most was how ordinary they were. They didn't look threatening. They weren't crumbling, they weren't steep enough to require ropes and a rescue helicopter. They were just there. But they came after another part of the path. Before those three steps, there are two lower sets of stone steps. Ten steps total. By the time I climb those, my body has already started sending memos. My lungs get involved, my heart gets involved, my legs offer commentary. My breathing changes from casual human breathing to that special chronic illness breathing where you try to look normal while your chest is doing math. Then, after those ten steps, here come the next three. Three more. And then an incline. That was the part my brain had filed under no thank you. It wasn't only the steps, it was the timing. They were the extra demand after the earlier demand. They were the little final addition that made my body say, Really? We're doing more? When you live with cardiopulmonary sarcoidosis and heart failure, ordinary outdoor features can become negotiations. A path is not just a path, a hill is not just a hill. Stairs are not just stairs. They become a kind of forecast. You look ahead and calculate how much breath you have, how much pride you're willing to risk, how far you are from a place to stop, and whether anyone nearby is going to notice if you pause and pretend to admire a bush. I have admired many bushes. Some of them deserved it. Some of them were just conveniently located. So I understood why I started going around those steps. My body had given me enough reason to be careful. I wasn't being foolish. I wasn't inventing limitations for fun. I know what it feels like when my body draws a line and says, no, we're done. I've learned to respect that line because ignoring it usually comes with a bill. But these steps weren't beyond me. They had become loaded. That word fits better than anything else. Loaded. They carried more meaning than they deserved. They reminded me of effort. They reminded me that something that used to be simple now required planning. They put me right in the spot where I had to feel the change in my body, not as an idea, not as a diagnosis, not as a line in a medical chart, but in my legs, my chest, my breathing, my timing. That is not pleasant. It's much easier to avoid the place where your body tells the truth out loud. I don't mean out loud like words. I mean out loud in that physical way, when your breathing changes and your face gets warm, and your body starts using sensations instead of sentences. You can ignore a thought. Not impossibility. I've dealt with procedures, diagnoses, devices, scars, medications, side effects, and the paperwork that seems to reproduce in drawers when nobody is watching. I've had to keep moving through fear that was not cute, not tidy, and not especially interested in my schedule. I've done the big stuff. Not gracefully every time. Let's not invent a saint out of me. I have complained. I have cursed. I've made jokes in places where jokes probably should have been escorted out by security. I've gone quiet. I have gotten tired of being tired. I've answered medical questions with the emotional warmth of a damp paper towel. But I showed up. So why were three steps getting this much power? That question made me laugh. Not because it was funny exactly, although it was a little funny. It was the kind of laugh that comes out when you catch yourself being deeply human in a way you would prefer not to have documented. Because the steps were small. And small things are where avoidance hides best. Nobody is surprised when you're afraid of the giant thing, the scary diagnosis, the procedure, the phone call from the office, the scan results, the appointment where everybody is being just a little too calm. Those things announce themselves. But three steps a letter on the table, a message you don't open, a place you used to go without thinking, a conversation you keep moving to next week. Those things can slip into your routine without asking permission. And after a while you stop calling them fear. You call them preference, timing, convenience, energy management, practicality. Sometimes they really are those things. Other times they are fear wearing a very reasonable sweater. I think people with chronic illness get especially good at this because we have to be practical, we have to plan, we have to conserve energy, we have to consider consequences that other people may never think about. I can't always treat my body like it's going to cooperate simply because I have a good attitude and a calendar. A good attitude does not oxygenate you. A calendar does not climb the stairs for you. So yes, I plan, I adjust, I choose the better entrance, I skip the unnecessary hill, I sit when I need to sit. I let things wait when they can wait. I am not ashamed of that. But I also know there's a thin line between respecting my body and surrendering pieces of my life before I've checked whether they actually need to be surrendered. That line is not always clear. That's why noticing helps. I stood there and let myself notice what I had done. I didn't rush into a heroic staircase moment. I didn't square my shoulders like I was about to enter a movie training montage. I just stopped. I breathed. I gave my body a second to catch up with the rest of me. Then I climbed the three steps. No orchestra. No applause. No slow-motion triumph. Just my feet on stone, my breathing not exactly thrilled with me, and my body doing what it could do. That was enough. It wasn't about proving I could do every staircase forever. I have no interest in letting stone structures set the terms of my self-worth. Some days going around will still be the right choice. Some days the longer path may be the smarter path. Some days my body may look at those steps and respond with a firm, professional rejection. Fair enough. But that day, I could do them. And because I could do them, I didn't want fear making the decision for me. There's a difference between choosing the easier path because your body needs it and choosing it because a tiny part of you is afraid to find out what the harder path will reveal. That difference can be hard to admit, especially when illness has already taken enough. Nobody wants to stand in front of three steps and have a personal reckoning. Most of us have errands. Some of us have groceries in the car. Nobody scheduled a therapy session with landscaping. But chronic illness often turns ordinary moments into quiet measurements. How far can I walk today? How much breath do I have? Can I carry this? Can I stand through that? Can I make it to the chair without looking like I'm negotiating with gravity? Can I do the thing I used to do automatically? Or has that become another small border? Those questions can wear you down because they don't always arrive dramatically. They show up during errands, in parking lots, at family gatherings, on paths, in kitchens and hallways, in the split second when you scan a room and decide where your body can safely exist. Even in my private chef work, that kind of calculation follows me. Not as a grand announcement, more like a quiet background program running while I'm checking the refrigerator, planning a meal around one family's preferences, setting something to simmer, or packing leftovers the way I know they like them. I may look like I'm just moving through a familiar kitchen, but part of me is also measuring energy. How long have I been standing? How much prep is left? Can I finish this before my body starts acting like I've asked it to renovate a barn? That's not self-pity. That's logistics. And when your life involves illness, logistics become intimate. They live in your body, they live in your routes, they live in whether you take the stairs or the ramp, or pretend to admire another bush because your lungs need a minute. The danger is not the adjustment itself. The danger is when the adjustment becomes invisible. Because once something becomes invisible, it can start making choices for you. Those three steps showed me that I had let one small choice become automatic. I had handed a tiny piece of the map to fear and called it efficiency. So I took it back. Not all of it, not permanently, not with any guarantee about next week. Chronic illness doesn't work like that. My body is not a vending machine where I insert determination and receive predictable performance. Some days it gives, some days it refuses. Some days it gives and then charges interest later. But I took back that moment. I stood there, breathed, climbed the steps, and felt the absurd little dignity of doing something small that I had quietly stopped doing. I wish I could say it felt profound in a clean, impressive way. It didn't. It felt like being slightly winded and mildly annoyed at how much meaning my brain had attached to landscaping. It felt like laughing at myself because after everything I've been through, three stone steps had somehow become bargain-bin villains in a low budget sequel. That's life, though. It doesn't always come at you with dragons. Sometimes it comes at you with a path, a small incline, and three pieces of stone arranged in exactly the wrong emotional order. And sometimes, for a while, the landscaping wins. Then one day you stop, look at it, and realize it doesn't get to keep the whole store. I don't want to turn this into a speech about conquering every fear. That would be false and also exhausting. Some fears deserve respect. Some limitations deserve accommodation. Some days the wise choice is the gentle one. Living with illness has taught me that pushing through everything is not courage. It can also be denial wearing gym clothes. But avoidance deserves a little inspection. Not punishment. Inspection. What am I walking around? What have I renamed as preference? What has become part of the map without my permission? What small thing has been given too much authority? The answers may not be dramatic, they may be embarrassingly ordinary. A step, a message, a room, a form, a call, a memory attached to a place, a habit that started as caution and grew roots. That's okay. Ordinary does not mean harmless. Small does not mean powerless. A life can shrink in inches. It can also expand that way. One breath. One step. One decision to stop letting a tiny fear pretend it owns the road. I faced the steps that day. I also laugh because I'm still me, and if I can't laugh at being challenged by three pieces of stone, then what are we even doing here? But under the humor was a real reminder. My body has limits, and I need to honor them. Fear also has habits, and I need to notice those before they start making house rules. The steps didn't become magical, I didn't become new. I just moved forward in a small place where I had stopped moving forward, and for that day, that was enough. Some victories are not loud enough for anybody else to hear. They happen in the pause before you move, in the breath you take before trying, in the quiet decision to check whether something is truly beyond you or just carrying an old warning label. That day the warning label came off three stone steps, and I walked over them like a person who is tired, winded, amused, and still here. I'm Tate, and this is Surviving Chronic Illness, Life in a Body That Rebels. Thanks for being here. You're welcome to send me short personal messages through the text link. I can read and reply, but only the last digits of your number are visible to me through that link. For longer messages, please reach me through the website. And please know I'm not able to respond to solicitations, sales offers, guest pitches, or promotional outreach. And if you'd like to do something tangible to help people living with sarcoidosis, please consider making a donation to the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, or FSR, at stopsarcoidosis.org. I'll also put a link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please follow the show, share it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday. So until next time, stay safe, be happy, and most of all, keep breathing. And remember, sarcoidosis is only rare until you're the one living with it.