coffeebarconfessions

Last fall I started back to work as a freelance makeup artist. It wasn't something I was planning, it was actually kind of a fluke. I was buying makeup one afternoon and ran into a former employee, who now holds a relatively significant position with the company. After overcoming some psychological resistance on my part, seeing as I thought my cosmetics days were long behind me, I decided freelancing was a great way to pick up some much-needed cash, as well as reclaim a piece of my life my illnesses stole from me. But it was scary. For my first assignment I had to drive forty-five miles away, work in a fast-paced environment with the *gasp* general public, and spend eight hours running around on my feet. Then drive forty-five miles back home on one of LA's most infamous parking lots, the 405 freeway. All by myself.  Of course I was so nervous about being late, I didn't sleep the night before. That lasted a good three months. Upon arriving at work, I learned during the four ...

June marks the tenth anniversary of when I first became sick. Ten years since life as I knew it ceased to exist. Ten years of more devastation, loss, and anguish than I thought one lifetime could possibly possess. During the last ten years, I've reached some severe lows. Like many people who live in chronic pain, eventually my appearance became the last thing in the world I cared about. I hurt too much to give a rats woo-ha how meth-addicted my long, dark roots looked against my bleached-blonde hair. When my chronic fatigue syndrome/ME was so bad I had to choose between taking a shower and emptying the dishwasher, the dishwasher usually won. Between the weight gain and medication-induced apathy, panic and fear over my crumbling ability to care for myself, and that faithful friend called depression to accompany all of this misery, I let myself go. I didn't just let myself go. I wouldn't shower for days. I'd greet both the sun and the moon wearing the same sweatpants, aga...

I accidentally put sunscreen so close under my eyes that my eyelashes picked it up and deposited it in my eyeballs. So I proceeded to squint and blink my way through stinging, blurry vision for most of the morning until I finally started going so crazy I doused my eyes in water. But it was too late. By the time sat down to start writing I was already pissed off and fidgety and distracted. The kernel of anger sitting inside my stomach started pushing anxiety into my limbs. I started obsessing on everything I need to get done, which is a lot. Then I got mad over how late in the day it was and how little I'd already accomplished. This led me to fixate on how many things are wrong with my life, which is ginormous. Next, the bucking panic over the fact that this shattered, shambled semblance of reality is actually my earthly existence started to take over. It's my daily fork in the road. Or at least every other day, so it seems. I've found if I squash my perception of what's...

I've been doing so well lately I was starting to wonder if I still had Fibromyalgia. Then I woke up this morning. My eyelids were heavy, head ached, and I felt like I was trudging through quicksand. My determination to overcome this horrible illness is so tunnel-visioned I managed to push myself all the way to the gym. Once I started my workout I knew this was more than just a mild fluctuation in my immune function, the main symptom I seem to be left with these days. Regardless, I made it through my workout only somewhat annoyed my diminished cardio-endurance had me huffing and puffing with nary a sweat bead rolling down my forehead. On the way home I started feeling worse. The familiar flu-like symptoms I spent years at the mercy of descended around me like a blanket, snuffing out any post-workout endorphin-glow I might have managed to achieve. Now I sit here feeling so awful I'm trying not to sink into a PTSD fit of "screw my life" despair. Because really, as bad as...

As a child growing up in middle-class America I believed nutritional information, that little box with the breakdown of calories, fat, carbs and sugar on the back of packaged food, was nutrition itself. By the time I was in high school the calorie-obsessed '80s had given way to the fat-obsessed '90s. So basically I believed nutrition consisted of grams of fat, and little else. How was anyone to know polite society wouldn't truly grasp the real nuts and bolts of nutrition until the Atkins-obsessed '00s taught us about the evils of carbs? What freedom! Everyone gleefully chucked their white pasta and fat-free Wonder bread for bacon-wrapped fried cheese and steak. It took me many years to unlearn the bullshit passed off as nutritional knowledge in the good ol' U.S. of A. It took me even longer to finally source what nutrition actually is. Nourishment. I no longer give a rats woo-ha about calories, fat, carbs, sugar or food-guide pyramids. In fact, I rarely eat food tha...

For the woman who loves Mondays, simply because they offer a clean slate to do better, you betcha I'm thrilled it's a new year. While I'm not quite in 'resolution' mode, I am hell bent and determined to implement two changes in my life. The first is to stop reacting. To anything and everything. Always. Forever and ever. This doesn't mean if some horrible tragedy befalls a loved one I can't cry, but it does mean I can't run around like Chicken Little holding my wounded head and declaring to anyone and everyone that the world is ending. Which is something I frequently do. But it hasn't ended yet, hence the resolution to stop reacting. The other change I'm striving for is to finally, once and for all, no ifs ands or buts, get myself on a normal schedule. Staying up till after two in the morning, then sleeping till eleven the next day, is completely annihilating my ability to move my life forward. The problem is it's frequently hard for me to fal...

So I’m strolling through Instagram last night, and come across a very young woman who is disabled with ME/ CFS . She’s popular, a couple thousand people follow her, and quite open about her struggles with this illness. She got sick after catching a “flu” virus. A year later she isn’t better. I stopped trolling for likes on my juicing post, and immediately started sobbing from the depths of my soul. I know her plight so well I want to scream into the loudest microphone in the world! CFS is what first got me sick. Fibromyalgia wasn’t my initial diagnosis. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was. And just typing the words makes me wail like a wounded baby. Because if I knew then, nine years ago in my twenties, what I know now, a battered and broken warrior in my late thirties, OH MY GOD, what could I have done to salvage my lost life?????!!!!!! Is there anything I could have done to make the last nine years not happen? Is there anything I could tell this girl, who is so upset to be looking at her fi...