Perfect Perspective

Acceptance. Surrender. Release of control. Oh these are virtues I struggle with accepting in my post-fibro world. Unfortunately I was terrible at respecting them before I got sick so didn't already have those neuropathways well formed and familiar. I was raised to do one thing, persevere. Push through the struggle, work through the challenge, rise to the occasion. Well that did me NO good whatsoever when I got sick, for the harder I pushed the deeper I fell.

I recently went through an experience that perfectly personifies the madness of this entire life-cycle. I scheduled a carpet cleaning. I scrubbed my house from top to bottom in preparation, moving anything but furniture away to clear the path to clean. My errands were all set for the day and I woke up early, at the ready to leave my house with my dogs the second they arrived so the carpet could dry in peace. But the cleaners never came. I threw a fit, so bitter and angry about all the work I did to prepare. It hurt me! But the carpet cleaners did not care. Nobody, really cared. What on earth is the big deal? A little annoyance was permissible, but flipping out and driving myself into a terrible flare was extremely over reactive. Unfortunately being me, that is exactly what I did.

Two weeks later I was ready to tackle the beast again, for my carpets had not gotten any cleaner in the meantime. I cleaned a little, made my husband move everything out of the way and didn't give one rats woo-ha about padding wet white socks or puppy paw prints across the damp yarn. And guess what? My carpets got cleaned. The world did not come to an end, earth didn't cease to orbit off its axis or flare wasn't invited to viciously ensue. My carpets simply got clean. I was minorly annoyed I had to run the heat and keep the windows open to get it dry in the wet rain, but whatever. I recognized a marked difference in my attitude between Carpet Cleaning Incident of 2011 Part 1 and Carpet Cleaning Incident of 2011 Part 2, and that made all the difference. So I shared my joy with some friends. Upon expressing how I settled and wasn't so uptight about everything being "perfect" they reminded miss fancy pants over here I was not nearly that perfect to begin with. I just wanted to be and worked tirelessly to obtain it.

Thanks for joining,

Leah