coffeebarconfessions

Thirty days ago I flew into a fit of rebellion against the direction my life was headed. I decided to try and take back some control over my circumstances by blogging every day for thirty days. Desperate to figure out what the hell had happened and how to correct it, I figured pouring my heart and soul into my blog would allow me the clarity to fix what was becoming very broken. Me. Challenging myself to such a high expectation seems funny to me now, considering I know very well life isn't "just a decision" and habits aren't "made in twenty-one days" like everyone seems to think. But, alas, I tried, and managed to blog ten times over the course of the month. Considering I usually post about four times a month, I'm pleased with the result of my efforts. Even if my competitive nature has me determined to blog at least eleven times during the month of December.  Thirty days showed me a lot. While it didn't even remotely fix what is broken, I am now awar...

Every morning I wake up hoping and praying I feel better. It isn't happening. What is happening, however, is my mental strength is being unduly tested. Severely. Each day my grasp on health and stability slips further from my reach. I keep telling myself this will pass, the darkness will lift, the flare will subside, and I will NOT lose all my hard-fought progress to this illness again.  Not reacting to such a temporary state of being is the greatest gift I can give myself, right? For every time I let my life swirl into the gutter of chaos, it's only that much more work to get back up again. And I always get up again. So if I just don't slide so far down in the first place, this never-ending flare is entirely manageable, right? Except ten years isn't temporary. While I've been on an upswing (albeit a very hard climb) these last few years, the last ten years have been utterly life destroying. And I'm so unbelievably damaged, that is what's making it so hard t...

Today I did yoga. It hurt like hell. However, my flare finally subsided enough to allow me the energy to exercise, so I figured I'd get back on the horse. Of course, doing pigeon pose immediately reminded me of how far I've come on my exercise journey. Getting my hands to clasp over my head, with one knee bent straight before me and the other leg straight back behind me, is one of the hardest poses I've been able to achieve since I began exercising four years ago. I spent at least a year just getting myself to sit up straight, and it took another year to lift my hands off the mat. The day my crooked arms flung up above the shoulders, I swelled with the sweet joy of pride, before collapsing in a heap of anguish on the floor. Still to this day, nothing rips through the agony buried deep in my back muscles like pigeon pose.  Exercising has allowed me to get to know my body intimately. As I've lost weight and developed my muscles, thus working through much of the pain impri...

I've finally admitted something has to change, which is a really big step. Over the last four months, as my health has spiraled out of my control, I have spent a lot of time blaming myself for my challenges. If I were only stronger and more disciplined, or ate cleaner and exercised more, or could just stiffen my trembling upper lip and not take everything so personally, or could stand on my head while gargling... Needless to say, the games I've been playing with me have gotten me exactly where they always have-- sick and failing miserably. Except I'm not choosing to view this as a failure. This is a grand learning experience I had to try. I had to know if I could slip back into a fraction of my former life without crumbling. Sadly, I can't, but that's not something anybody could have discovered for me. It's something I had to figure out for myself. While today I'm not terribly pleased with the outcome, once I've figured out a way to extract myself from t...

I follow a lot of inspirational people on Instagram. Tons of workout chicks-- for motivation and ideas, a handful of adorable dogs, some awesome travel profiles, and lots of juicing/clean eaters. A slew of memes grace my cell-phone screen with challenging, encouraging, or just plain thought-provoking directives to get over myself and do better. Usually they work. Life is, after all, a decision, right? Sometimes, but not today. I've been home from work sick for two days, and this time can't blame it on a flu or "healthy person" sickness. Nope. This is good ol' fashioned fibro, and it's ripping my body apart. I haven't had a flare of this magnitude in a long while and it's terrifying me. More so because of the past than my inability to tolerate monumental levels of pain and weakness. No, I'm so worried because this is how the downward spiral starts. And it ends with me puddled in a mass on the floor with no job, no ability to exercise or juice to bea...

Last night when I came home from work I desperately needed to blog and juice. Considering I was far more woman-on-the-verge than capable of being productive, I elected to drink a few beers and watch TV. Turns out allowing myself to let my hair down was the best thing I could have done for me, but I didn't have much of a choice. There reaches a point where living in the immediacy of my misery is so unbearable I just can't do it anymore, and I was there. It wasn't all that surprising seeing as I've worked far more than normal this week, and my health is reeling from the consequences.  It's taken me a long while to recognize the time healthy people spend cultivating friendships, cleaning their house, traveling, or pursuing hobbies, I spend being sick. It is my down-time, free-time, and me-time all rolled up into one. The rest of my life is either spent working or managing my health. Before I went back to work I had a bit of a grasp on a few of life's details, but i...

On Sunday I felt pretty good. The flare cycle kicked in on Monday, which begins with a heavy dose of "everything is awful." I don't feel great, per se, but seem to exist in a billowing cloud of negativity more than being physically afflicted. Also, pretty consistently on day one, I seem to be filled with an unquenchable desire to quit my job. I mean, it is making me sick. Not in a life-shattering way, but in that "six-months ago I was a lot healthier" kind of way. It's also slowing down the progress of finishing my book, usurping my creativity, and making me fraternize with a sector of society I'd much rather prefer to ignore. Usually at the end of day one I start romanticizing the failed experiment that was me as a housewife, until I talk up the whole experience enough that it starts to sound like a pretty sweet option again. Never mind the small details that I need to work in order to pay my bills, or have improved in different ways in leaps and bounds...

My little girl has quite a checkered past. I don't know what happened to her, seeing as she's a dog and can't talk, but she's damaged. She has lots of weird behavior and a significant amount of fear. We've come to love her for all her quirks, and kind of know what to expect by now. After all, who understands the damaged better than the also-damaged? But some of her mannerisms are just plain odd. She goes into these trances where she checks out, and sits there staring at the wall refusing acknowledge anything until something snaps her out of it-- usually me putting on her leash and making her get off the sofa.   It hit me just now how much like her I am. My husband wanted to finish discussing something I couldn't shut up about a couple of hours ago while I was at work. But a lot can change in a few hours. By the time I closed up the store, got home, and was heating up my dinner, I wasn't in a space to continue the rather intense conversation we had earlier in...

Yesterday was hard. One of those days that make me wonder how I've survived so long with this illness. And if all my physical and psychological and emotional turmoil weren't enough, knowing I'd just promised to blog every day for the next thirty days about did me in. Writing yesterday's blog was incredibly hard. I've become accustomed to burying my head in the sand and avoiding reality when I get like that, certainly not talking about it or paying attention to how I feel. How I feel is totally irrelevant when I'm such a hot mess I don't even want to be around myself anymore. Really, who on earth wants to read about a melodramatic sick-chick feeling sorry for herself? But what a total flake, to just bitch out on the first day of my self-imposed challenge! So write that blog I did.   It was hard, but I've frequently found forcing myself to do something I know is good for me has benefits. Today was no exception. Even though I didn't sleep all that great...