A Cold Hard World

Life is a roller-coaster. One with no set path or laid track, swerving and veering at just the right moments, avoiding the crash into the inevitable, if you are lucky. There is no map to follow or manual to reference. You are shoved out of a warm womb into this cold hard world, held upside down and smacked on the bottom! If that isn't the biggest tell of what life is then I just don't know what! I was born carefree, and spent my childhood knowing I was deeply loved. But parents are human too, and as I grew up the pain of life took its nips at me. I morphed into a sad adolescent and spent my teen years rebelling and self-medicating the pain my nurture and nature had placed upon me. Of course eventually the injury from my bad choices got thrown into the mix as well, and I set sail into adulthood kicking and screaming. A total mess, emotionally closed off and not prepared for the level of responsibility life all-grown-up comes with. Somehow I was able to figure it out...one painful lesson at a time. 

Through all this experience what formed was a very dry, off-beat and cynical sense of humor. I developed an ability to laugh at the absurd, take the sad, dark and twisted and see a sardonic light of humor in it. I call myself a realist with a positive attitude. No one would ever call me Positive Polly, but hopefully not Downer Debbie, either. More like Sarcastic Sally. Yeah, that fits. Well Sarcastic Sally over here worked really hard to make a life for myself of my choosing. And I was getting there, I really was. And then I got sick. I got to meet Weepy Wilma, Depressed Deena and Unhopeful Ursula. Oh I did not like them! The unexplained pain and fatigue tore me up! And sadly I forgot how to laugh. Life does that when its mere survival is in question. And I had to learn all over again how to take care of and love myself while I progressed my life, when all I wanted to do was crawl under a rock and cease to exist. 

But my guardian angel, a very busy angel she must be, kept me safe. Slowly but surely, bit by bit, my fight came back. But that was not even the hard part! The hard part came when I actually had to use that fight to trump this illness. But I did. And as much as I hate to admit it I am so much better than I was before. The quality of my person, depth of my compassion. The growth in my heart and soul. And I have found my humor, my sarcasm, once again. There are many heartaches between the girl I was at 28, symptoms of some mystery illness halting me in my tracks, and the woman I am now. I have worked very hard to get back what Fibromyalgia took from me. My light, my hope. And I want to share with you all how I did it, knowing that your journey will be far different than mine, but maybe some bit of information will help. I have put everything I know, everything I did, in this blog and on The Fibromyalgia Crusade website. If you wanna know how I got here, there is lots and lots to read...

Thanks for joining,

Leah