What's The 911

Last week a silly timing coincidence and liberal use of an urgent phrase left me gasping for breath, certain the world was coming to an end and the walls were about to come tumbling down around me. On Thursday morning I woke up to multiple missed calls and text messages. An "ASAP I love you" from my dad, "ASAP I need your help" from my mom. Immediately I knew something grave had gone terribly wrong. My parents split when I was two and I am the only thing they've had in common for the last three decades. What on earth could've happened while I was sleeping that kicked off both their radar? What could two people who haven't seen each other in at least seven years both be privy to and urgent to contact me about, and using the exact same terminology, to boot? I grasped my throat and sucked in breath through a rapidly closing windpipe, that feeling of cold adrenaline washing through my core as terror surged through the haziness of having just woken up. I called my dad and waited, my heartbeat thumping in my ears, as he asked me about a future trip to visit him. Extremely confused, I sat raptly waiting to be told of some earth shattering debacle that would forever alter my reality. But there wasn't any. And when I called my mom she just needed a favor. I put down my phone and looked at Yorkie & Porkie, asking them what the hell just happened as all my energy, now unneeded and not used, drained from my limbs and into the gutter of an over-reactive stress response. I stumbled around for the rest of the day dazed, confused and utterly incapable of accomplishing one darned thing. Needless to say this entire experience was extremely annoying.

For the next few days I mulled over this exchange. Something significant had been shown to me, but I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. And then yesterday I figured it out. I'd tried to resume living normal life. Normal life is complicated, demanding, met with many expectations. There are endless numbers of people to let down, balls to drop and opportunities to fall short. Normal life does not respect sleep, solitude or peacefulness. And normal life most certainly does not provide a safe respite for Fibromyalgia, no matter how managed it may be. But everyone I know lives there, and I used to, too. It's familiar, the place I thought I needed to return in order to trump this nasty illness. The life I have focused all my efforts on getting back. But what happened on Thursday morning made me realize with stumbling clarity I can't live in that world anymore.

It's a viscous cycle. I work really hard to take care of myself and will start feeling a bit better. So I reach out to friends and family because, quite frankly, this small little box of isolation my life has become is counteractive to my outgoing personality. But with relationships comes reciprocity, give and take, the needs of others to consider. And that is where I fall short. I can be involved with happy upbeat folks with no problems and no needs that want to put in all the effort into the relationship, don't expect me to actually call them back and don't care if I disappear for weeks at a time in Fibro-flare or moody-writer mode. But I don't know any of those people, and if I did probably wouldn't like them because I'd think they were fake. So I try to take care of myself and be an equal participant in the comings and goings of the affairs of the healthy. And then undoubtedly something happens to knock me down and I retreat back into myself, unsure of what place I can honestly occupy in the land of the living. I don't have an answer here, but at least a better understanding of my reality and the stumbling blocks I encounter on the road to return to the land of my living.

Thanks for joining,
Leah