coffeebarconfessions

The internal battle waging war inside me right now is insane! I literally have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The angel tells me to ignore the immediacy of my problems. She tells me to go ahead with my plan of action, don't skip exercising because I'm flaring, go ahead and make the bed and do the dishes, because it's my job and has to get done anyway. The devil, on the other hand, is telling me to go buy a 6-pack of Dos Equis and sit by the pool drowning my sorrows, or eat a lot of greasy food, or basically indulge in anything sufficient enough to distract myself from the relatively minor molehill I've turned into a mountain. Sigh. My sleep-exercise conundrum has caught up with me. While I'm getting to bed at a normal time these days, which in and of itself is a miracle, I'm not sleeping enough. This rejuvenates the viral symptoms I spent the last year caught in the grip of. My head hurts, throat and sinuses are scratchy, inside of my mouth s...

Last week when I found myself sitting on my kitchen floor organizing my cleaning products to avoid doing it, I realized I have a pretty serious problem. Given my poor housekeeping skills the last thing I care about is how Comet and Draino hang-out under my sink. But the thought of doing what I was blatantly avoiding filled me with dread. As I shoved the box of cleaners under the sink I knew the moment was upon me. My heart started pounding and sweat broke out on my forehead. When I walked over to my computer I felt dizzy and nauseous. Intense doom invaded every cell of my body. The certainty of total global annihilation made me want to fling myself off my balcony to avoid such an ugly demise. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. After enduring the financial devastation of five years of Fibro, followed by four years of not working, this is what happens when I try to pay the bills. With a sinking heart I realized I was dealing with a physiological response to an emotional reaction...

Sleep is both my nemesis and best friend. I had absolutely no idea something as simple as falling asleep at night would become the bane of my existence before I got sick. We've settled into a rather symbiotic existence at this point, but the amount of work it took me to get here is astounding. A rather enlightening experience on Tuesday night reminded me how awful not sleeping is, and what a mess my life quickly becomes without it. I shut the computer off and went to bed at 2 AM, like a good girl, even though my mind was racing and I was anything but tired. After an hour of laying there amping myself up I got up, figuring trying to force my brain to shut down was having the opposite affect. Another hour and I wasn't any better off, but at this point it's 4 AM and my visions of a productive Wednesday are rapidly disintegrating before my eyes. So I got back in bed and tried to force myself to sleep. After another hour passes I'm so exhausted-hyper that anxiety is kicking ...

When I started this blog nobody read it. I wrote for four or five months without giving the link to a single soul. Just publishing it alone was an outrageously ambitious endeavor for a girl as private as I. The thought of anybody actually reading my inner agony sitting here on the world wide web was utterly mortifying. Then I almost died, and the treatment to cure my disease consisted of legalized meth, AKA high-dose Prednisone. So high as a crack-head I set out to let anyone who was interested know just how horrible Fibromyalgia was, a disease I suffered from for the previous five years and was struggling to rebuild my life around. Woo hoo, was I high on the fellowship of social media! The feedback was incredible, and planted an ember of passion in my soul to do something about the horrible reality far too many Fibromyalgia patients endure. By the time I was coming off the dragon-drug six months later people were reading. Clearly I started something, but exactly what I still ...

I sit here mystified and bewildered, unsure how to proceed. Thoughts of obligations, responsibilities, ambitions and dreams whirl around in my head in a constant 24-hour cycle. There is no break, no moment of peace, regardless of how badly I need certainty. Trying to make sense of my journey only makes me crazy and panicked. Attempts to manipulate my future leave me feeling raw and exposed. For so long my body hurt so bad it was all I could feel, think, see and do. That pain consumed me, invaded my heart and distorted my mind. I didn't think it would ever leave, to the point that I forgot who I was because that pain was all I could be. That pain became me. Something kept me going, but I don't know what. If I could bottle it and sell it I would gladly laugh my way to the bank to cash my millions. How does a person keep going with so much torment and adversity? What happened six months ago that changed everything? I hit the floor of a glass bottom boat hard, and stared at the chu...

Today I rejoice, because one of the hardest trials of my life is behind me, and I survived. It was hit or miss for a while. The motivated and unblemished 2014 I was certain awaited the other side of January 1st didn't quite offer me the clean slate I hoped for. Instead, while I was desperately trying to move my life forward, exhaustive circumstances kept slapping me around. How many times can a person get knocked down before realizing standing up is sometimes just too hard? I guess I don't know how to not fight for my own survival, though. I've been doing it too long to stop now, for crying out loud! So I kept going... At some point during the last few weeks my epic amount of hard work and determination to achieve a better life started paying off in spades. It wasn't something I even realized was happening until there was enough progress to look back and see it. In that instant of awareness I realized the greatest tool I possess is my brain. After all, it was my brain u...