The Luxury of Sick

I've spent the last two week laying around doing nothing. I shouldn't consider it nothing, considering I'm desperately trying to rebuild my health. But instead of saying, "I've spent the last two weeks laying around healing," I fault myself for such a monumental lack of productivity. I feel guilty for not doing the laundry or putting on makeup or going to the grocery store-- things a normal woman my age should do as an afterthought in her thriving, busy life. Yet when I do venture into the land of normal, those simple activities comprise my entire day and usurp all my energy. As I watch my muscles turn to mush and tummy fat muffin-top over my jeans, I wonder if I'll ever be able to return to the gym. And for the love of all things holy, I pray I'll someday gain enough confidence to even glance at the book I bothered to write, let alone try and sell it.

Rebuilding from the splatter of hitting bottom is hard. It wasn't until I accepted, again, that this illness is in control right now, and stopped flipping out about how bad it sucks, that I was even able to stop my decline. It's a daily battle, to be kind to myself, to forgive myself for being sick, to accept the limitations placed on my life. And to remember I've been far worse off before, and it's gonna take some time to improve, but I will eventually get my fibromyalgia managed again. I just don't know when.

Patience is a wicked virtue. Not one I was given in my basket of traits, via either nature or nurture. I'm a driven, competitive, type-A, bossy achiever. When life pushes me, I push back harder. But this does not work with fibromyalgia. I can't "mind over matter" or "action breeds progress" my way out of this one, and Lord knows I've tried! I do know of people who have managed to find peace and happiness while so sick they can barely function. I, my friends, am not one of them. I've tried to be. At times I have been. Right now I'm actually succeeding. But once the pain lifts, and the simple act of showering doesn't wipe me out for three hours, or I wake up with a speck of hope or optimism in my heart, I start racing to the finish line. Well not this time. I'm working hard for every ounce of health I can find, and unwilling to give it away because I want more. No, this time I'm building myself up slowly, gently, generously. I'm respecting where I am, where I've been, and where I want to go. And resting firm in the knowledge that I only begin to heal after I give myself the luxury of being sick.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Incurable Fog

Image
One day while driving down the street I forgot where I was. Mind you I just left Target and was headed toward home so had certainly been there before, but in that instant I couldn't have told you where I was on the planet if my life depended on it. I had to pull over and cry for a while, gnashing my teeth and pulling my hair over the fact that I was thirty years old and becoming so sick with something so unfixable, I was literally losing my mind. Flash forward a few years to when I had settled into the reality of living with fibromyalgia. Working retail was a painful necessity that was quickly running its course, so I set about trying to figure what on earth to do to earn a living. Naturally, this required me to take a Spanish course at the local community college. Not because I wanted to earn money off my non-existent Spanish 1 skills, but because I desperately needed to know if my brain was capable of learning and retaining new information, and I took French in high school.  I wo...
Read more

Back In The Saddle

Image
Well I got back on the horse. What else am I going to do? Take a long walk off a short pier or go play in traffic? So here I sit ready to try again. Raw, insecure and uncertain, but here I am. As I sort through the disillusionment in my mind I realize many of the sanity-saving tools I employed along the way got dropped in the dust a while back. I fell into my old behavior patterns. I allowed negativity and demands to infiltrate my sense of responsibility to myself. It's a big job, to regain my lost ground. I can do it, though. Not all at once, perfectly or on the first try, but it can be done. Of course this requires a significant amount of isolation and reflection. Accepting some will grumble over the selfish action of me taking care of me. Realizing that is not my problem. In fact, expecting myself to get a handle on my issues and then resume a level of interdependent living is exactly why I wound up back here in the first place.  I have finally accepted I cannot go back....
Read more

Waiting On the World to Care

Image
This blog has sat silent for many moons. For eight full ones, more or less, I've been imprisoned in an exile of my own creation. Initially I was so angry about my health relapse I didn't know what to say, other than to hurl epic amounts of fury at my keyboard. I had no solutions, no answers, and nothing positive to contribute. So instead of spewing hate all over the permanent cloud of internet technology, I donned the hair shirt of self-flagellation and turned that anger inward. It's been a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad eight months. As I got sicker and sicker, I got madder and madder. The angrier I became, the more I sequestered myself. I refused to talk about my problems or how I felt. It seemed pointless, like it didn't matter. Nobody could do anything about it or begin to comprehend my reality. There was just me, an isolated island of misery, who wanted to do anything but talk about being an isolated island of misery. But nobody understood that either. I...
Read more