When I was 13 years old I got caught. I got in trouble. They found something in my locker at school that should not have been there and the result was abandoning my fathers suburban tract home to reside at my mother's country sprawl. I was just learning to separate myself from my family identity and one mixed-up little girl was emerging. A few years later I moved back to the suburbs and it was not long before I got in trouble again. Same friends & more = same stuff & more. But this was private, this was at home, and I was grounded. I spent my 16th birthday grounded. I was allowed to go to work and that was it for like the whole summer grounded. I was not allowed to get my drivers license on my 16th birthday. But my father was never one to deprive me for long and I recall getting it about a month or two after. Those were two jarring experiences for me and equally for my parents too. The necessary and painful experiences that get you back on track to a life of independent success, not absorbed down the drain of too much excess. So I learned how to carry the party girl deep and well hidden. I still caused little bits of trouble for myself here and there, but none I could not get myself out of, none my parents were ever aware of. Like I said, she was well hidden.
Around age 22 my body got me in trouble. First pancreas attack. It took another bout with Pancreatitis 6 months later to diagnose a genetic triglyceride malfunction that was causing them and drinking and eating were heavily curbed. Then comes the 3rd one at age 28. See after a few years pass, we get married, move to San Francisco and discover what it is like to have a bar literally downstairs from your house (a lot of fun!). The drinking and greasy food were back up again. So back on the wagon I go. Six months later I got sick and have never gotten better. In fact my entire life has been absorbed by overcoming and managing chronic illness. So what I am trying to say is that every time I have grown wayward in my intentions, my actions, something has stopped it. Something big has gotten in my way and put me on track again. I wonder if it has harmed me or saved me. One will never know.
I can look at this as a curse or a blessing. Or maybe a little of both. This is tough stuff. The pain, fatigued, dazed existence of a Fibromyalgia patient. Very hard to embrace while life as planned necessarily goes away. Hides itself under a bucket of symptoms, waiting for you to get through them and to pick up that bucket and look under it. But they are impossible to get through. They are too strong, too many obstacles in your way, medicine does not understand, doctors do not understand, NOBODY UNDERSTANDS! I know that I have chosen in my life to seek out health and wellness. See I believe there are specific medical reasons why we experience CFS & Fibromyalgia. Science just does not know them yet. I believe they must find a cause before they can find a cure. I also believe the modern lifestyle is extremely unhealthy, entirely too convenient and not enough work where it counts. In making food, in exercising, in sleeping, oh you know me, the list goes on. So until they figure it out, advance enough to inform us what in our minds and bodies is causing these illnesses, I choose to be the healthiest me I can be. And that is striving for health, but more importantly forgiving myself for being human and nowhere near perfect.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
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