Little Girl Lost

I don't know how to pick up the pieces of my life and start over. All I know is I'm crying every day. Feeling hopeless, lost, and so much anger I can't even see straight. There's so much to do I don't know where to start. We're out of toothpaste, for crying out loud, but have I gone to the store to get more? I'm over halfway done writing a book I can't fathom finishing because my head is such a jumble of chaos. Exercising, juicing, pacing, releasing stress and embracing the positive, those all seem like relics from another lifetime, another person's life. I worked so hard to create an existence for myself in Arizona I could be successful at. Now I live in a place where it's too expensive for me to not work, I have a bevy of rekindled personal relationships to disappoint, and everything I try to do makes me feel like a colossal failure.

Boy, I really need to go watch that Transformation documentary on Werner Erhard that changed my life last summer. Clearly I've lost my grip on the mere concept of acceptance and moving forward in life, not looking back and trading the precious present to stew in the cesspool of a hurtful past. This is what happens when I get stuck on the reactive living train. Suddenly life becomes about what happens to me, not about what I make happen. Then it's a real quick slide into the mire of perpetual victimhood. It's pathetic. It's also my default, the mindset I lived with for so many years. Because honestly, when a person gets sick, life becomes about survival and reacting to what happens. It's the most out of control I ever felt in my entire life, and I absolutely hated it. Hate it.

Is there enough strength buried deep inside me to rebuild my destroyed psyche? All I feel is so much yuck, gobbling up my health, my stability, my future, any hope of having a life. But I want my future! I want the future I planned. The one where I get my book published, change the face of Fibromyalgia awareness in this country, and actually do something to improve the world I live in. Right now I feel so far away from that woman, the one who thought she could impact change, that it's like I never even knew her at all.

Thanks for joining,

Leah 

I'm Back!

Finally, after over a month without internet, I'm sitting on my couch, on my own wifi, connected to the online world. This past month brought more chaos and calamity than I figured would find me for the rest of my life. But the bottom line is today finds me at zero. All the mental and emotional progress I gained over the last year, all that hard work I did to stabilize my existence, all that acceptance I swallowed to come to terms with my reality, well, it's crumbling down around me like the walls of Jericho. 

I'll find my footing. Perhaps there's still a bigger bottom to hit. Not much would surprise me at this point in the game. But simply moving one state over won't do me in. It may challenge me in new ways, shape me into a design I didn't know I wanted to resemble, cuckold me in the head a few more times, but certainly won't spell my demise. In fact, as I sit waiting for the refrigerator repairman to show up for the dozenth time, I'm beginning to think the grand lesson in this colossal, never-ending headache is to learn how to smile in the eye of the storm. I mean, after sitting in the direct path of pelting hail with no shelter in sight, dontcha just gotta start laughing at some point? Even if it's just to mask the rage-induced psychosis.   

Thanks for joining,

Leah   

My Demise

Los Angeles is beating the proverbial crap out of me. I’ve only been here two weeks, but so many darn things keep going wrong I’m sliding right back into survival mode. The one where at any given moment I’m prepared for an anvil to drop from the sky onto my head, semi-truck to careen into me from nowhere, and something as random as two strokes to strike my brain. It’s exhausting, living in a constant state of disaster preparedness. If things don’t start turning around quickly I’m not sure the town I’m from will allow me to continue. Over the years I wondered why I grew-up to be such a cynical, surly, hotheaded broad. Well I’m not wondering anymore! Simply surviving the insane drivers and aggressive, self-absorbed people I encounter at every turn is enough to make a girl want to crawl on her hands and knees back to the sweltering desert I just deserted. Or at the very least revert to my previous state of being known as ‘total bitch’.

I’m damaged goods. There aren’t enough pep-talks inside me to keep going like this. I’ve barely healed from the previous nine years of sickness and random tragedy. I finally got to a place where I could walk around like everything’s fine and dandy, even though it isn’t. I liked pretend land! Because for so many years I was in so much physical pain there was no pretending anything, there was just wanting to die. A bold-faced game of ‘blend into the land of the healthy’ seemed like such progress for me… Now it seems to be my undoing. Of course I’m taking on more than I can handle. It isn’t really an option. I knew when we decided to move I was foregoing safe and comfortable for a life I actually wanted to live. It’s doubtful I would ever have enough insulation around me to not feel the bumps and bruises such a rough transition delivers.

Harsh reality tells me life doesn’t give a shit if I’m sick. Mr. Werner Erhard’s est school of hard knocks tells me simply by being alive I’m entering into a consensual agreement to accept whatever the hell may happen in the future, along with the responsibility to fix whatever it does to my life. And too much experience living tells me things can still get a hell of a lot harder than they are right now. But the bitterness is taking over. I got sick and it ruined my life. Does that mean I'm relegated to wither away living the life that happens to me, not the life I make happen? Am I ever going to rise from perpetual victim-hood and soar among the clouds of my dreams? I didn't ask for this life and I didn't do anything to cause it. Yet still, the charge to fix it is mine, and mine alone.

Thanks for joining,

Leah             

Lone Wolf In A Pack

Last week my husband and I put everything we owned into storage pods and left Arizona for good. The experience has been all the crazier because until we sign the lease on our new apartment tomorrow, we've been homeless. Not on the street homeless, but staying with family homeless. Prior to this upheaval I knew I was a reclusive, withdrawn, anti-social brat with little ability or desire to marinade my days away in the company of others. But even I didn't know how much I've come to rely on the ordered bubble of my solitary universe. It's hard, being around people all the time. I'm exhausted, stressed-out, freaked-out, wigged-out and overworked. Not to mention achy, fluish, and riddled with boils. However, despite so much insanity, I'm somehow holding it together. Most of the time.

Moving back to my hometown is intensely challenging my illness-life balance. While I'm thrilled friends and family are vying for a chance to catch up, I'm incredibly overwhelmed with obligation. Which makes me want to bury my head in the sand and run away at the same time. Or at the very least, revert to my former habit of not answering my phone or checking my messages. On the flip side, the voracity of my reluctance to engage socially makes me feel like an ungrateful child content to squander the affection of others. My brain tells me to get over myself and stop viewing people through duty-tinted glasses. I guarantee if the situation were reversed, and nobody from my youth gave a rats woo-ha about my return, I would feel a lot worse.

The extent of the grand challenge ahead of me is becoming clear. My Los Angeles relations have never really known me sick. Listening to someone bitch on the phone about how bad they feel is a far cry from a once-dependable person turning into a complete flake. I try to remind myself of how much better my health actually is, considering where it's been. Sadly that only flusters my inner type-A into reverting to the people-pleaser of my past. Then of course I try to rise to the occasion, and crash and burn into a puddle of my own frustration. Consciously I know there is no going back to my previous life-model. It simply won't allow me the focus, peace or solitude to maintain my health and accomplish my life. But until I get some order back in my universe, until my days are mine again, and I begin to de-stress from this wild ride life is taking me on, this lone wolf is having a very hard time settling into the pack.

Thanks for joining,

Leah