Full Speed Ahead

I am not liking today. I have a headache and blurred vision, very Fibro-fogged, and am quickly spiraling into a very bad mood. This usually means a flare-up is on its way to my house! Woo Hoo! My poor immune system is really fighting Prednisone, but some days it seems like it is not winning. Our best friends are getting married in Florida next month and I cannot possibly see a way to go. We simply do not have the money. Where am I pulling $1000 out of to fly, eat and sleep? My ass? My husband is back on his "work every Saturday" kick again but is totally falling apart so I don't see how that is possible, either. He is already exhausted and barely hanging on. What is more concerning is he is determined to push himself to the brink. Exactly what I did when I first got sick. Back in 2004 & 2005 I knew my life was too much for me but I ignored every warning sign and barreled full-speed ahead, winding up crashing and burning in an exhausted heap of sickness. Here I sit 6 years later, my life completely altered forever because I was determined to live up to some expectation our modern society has convinced us is important but is actually destroying us! Now he is doing the same thing...I see it so clearly! Almost hoping to hit that wall, that stopping point because then he will be FORCED, have no choice but to fold, break down, end the madness. How many of you out there recognize this in yourself? How many of you pushed the pre-Fibromyalgia you to the brink of exhaustion, sanity and destruction until your body just could not take it anymore and said ENOUGH? Now you are too sick to move and hurt all over and can't think clearly and cannot sleep. How many of you disrespected yourself in your attempt to fulfill your obligations and are paying for it years and years later? I know I am.

I want my life back! I want to invite my father and his girlfriend and her kids to town for Thanksgiving. I want to go to this wedding SO badly. The thought of missing it breaks my heart! They are our best friends, Godparents to the Yorkie. I am vacillating between serving Jury Duty in November as scheduled or postponing it until January, after the holidays. But in January will I be back in class, resuming my goal of learning Spanish? So should I just do it now and get it over with? Will I even be back in school in January? What does my future hold? Oh having such little control is making me crazy with madness... I feel like an airplane put on a permanent holding pattern, never allowed to execute the landing, just circling around and around in the air like some giant vulture. Waiting for the word, the sign that it is okay to begin again. See I was almost there, beginning my life again, resuming some normal activities and expectations and setting goals and then the strokes hit at the end of July and knocked me all the way back to START on the game board of life.

So I am taking control, but in the way the new me knows how. The woman that has learned through her trials and experiences how high the cost of living crazy can be. I called my husband and informed him over my dead body will he start working every Saturday again. I absolutely will not sit here and watch him do to himself what I did to myself. He is not allowed to self-destruct. NO NO NO NO! I think I scared him a bit with my intensity, my authority over our future (but it did garner me a trip to Yogurtland on his way home from work). I told him what matters is the 4 of us (the 2 puppies for those that are new), and we are putting ourselves first. We are going to sit right here and focus on our lives, no matter how sad we are to miss the wedding or not have family come for Thanksgiving or any other activity that represents living normal. We are not quite there yet. I must focus on my writing, he must focus on his acting and we must focus on our lives. We are in a phase of retreat, of rebuilding what has been taken out in the storm of Fibromyalgia and CFS. I have faith that one day we will reach normal again, but for now I am resting assured that we will not be living life full speed ahead just yet, and that is perfectly okay.

Thanks for joining,
Leah