coffeebarconfessions

At this point in my Fibromyalgia journey my flares are pretty predictable. Two to four times a month I will suffer from a bevy of viral symptoms. In the past it has felt like Shingles. Luckily it's been a few years since my symptoms were that extreme. These days my flares usually start with a severely hellacious mood. Right as I am about to commit myself to a rubber room buckled tight into a straight jacket the inside of my mouth will shred to pieces. This reminds me there is a physical reason for my emotional turmoil. Then the boil comes. For some unbeknownst reason my face seems to be the choice spot for the last year or so. Next enters the aching face, throbbing skull, congestion and generous smattering of pain and malaise across my body. There's more but that's how the ball gets rolling... Last week I started feeling bad but it was nothing like the aforementioned. I was pretty much incapacitated with pain and fatigue. So while half of me freaked out, convinced I was dyi...

Last week we celebrated the 237th anniversary of American independence. For some odd reason a key phrase in the preamble of our constitution kept reverberating around my mind. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Actually it was more ' the pursuit of happiness'  part I kept dwelling on. Like it was a foreign concept I just learned existed. With a shock of awareness I realized that's exactly what happened. Because I forgot about it. See the pursuit of happiness is a frivolous concept when your basic needs aren't met. It is only after sleep, shelter, safety and food are secured that a being can advance onto the next stages of societal engagement. Unfortunately getting horribly sick when every doctor told me I should be completely healthy violated my safety in a major way. My inability to work or care for myself threatened my procurement of shelter and food. And the illness itself robbed me of my sleep. No wonder I wasn't working towards happy, I was j...

Perhaps the biggest challenge I've faced over the last year with Fibromyalgia concerns sleep. At times it's become so out of control I'd watch the sky slowly brighten with dawn as tears of utter frustration streamed down my face. Unable to do much more than pop more pills and try to ignore the mounting anxiety claiming my psyche. The popping pills thing didn't work, though. I'd either be too dulled out to do much of anything the next day or sleep until two o'clock in the afternoon. Certainly not moving towards the illusive forward progress of life. But not sleeping leaves me unable to function, too, pinning me into a nice little box of my own insanity.  So I decided to institute my own version of sleep hygiene. Staying up all hours of the night writing left me wired and panicked. Sleeping all day made me unable to participate in life. And procrastinating all evening on doing the dishes and packing my husband's lunch insured if I did get tired, I'd still ...