Monday, August 26, 2019

Isolation Street

I'm doing it again. Isolating. Not writing. Not engaging. Nothing is important enough to blog about, so I blog nothing at all. I'm back to being fully enmeshed in writing my novel. My YouTube channel is still the thorn in my side, like each time I have to step out of my book to create, film, and edit our weekly episodes, I'm being pulled from the womb of creation. Shoved into the cold, bleak reality that I actually live in, not the over-dramatized and fully manipulate-able world I'm creating where people can engage in all sorts of insane behaviors and I suffer no actual consequences.

My real world is nowhere I want to be right now. Especially after I spent 12 hours in the ER the week before last, suffering from and being diagnosed with an acute case of colitis. The simple action of receiving a diagnosis in 12 hours is a miracle that's hardly lost on me. Hell, I've had fibro for 14 years now and they still have no clue what's causing that... But I guess my body wanted to offer up some diagnostic proof for my pain, so the CT showed inflammation in my lower intestine. Is this another chronic illness or a one time thing caused by an infection or something? I don't have any of the symptoms of colitis on a regular basis. Did intermittent fasting, or the way I was doing it, kick something off? I guess I won't know until my GI appointment in September.

The mentality I had to adopt in order to survive my CFS relapse is, by normal standards, the laziest way a human being can possibly live. Basically I had to lay around all day and could only be active in short burst, until the first moment that veil of fatigue started to slide over my eyes, whereupon I had to immediately resume doing diddly squat. ASAP. If I ignored the muslin obscuring my view and pushed on, I faced long spells shrouded in thick velvet cloak of extreme fatigue. No short bursts were possible at all. That does something to a person's mind, forcing oneself to not exist while existing. To squash down every biological impulse telling me that to endure I must fight, push back, work harder. Where in the survival of the fittest life chain does a person with chronic fatigue syndrome exist?

It took years, and I'm still not sure why or how, but thankfully my tango with CFS is behind me. But my mind has not recovered. It's not that I sit around all day doing nothing. No, that's not it at all. But that extra push that's required to get me back to a normal, functioning, productive, part-time member of society, well, I'm terrified of it. I'm terrified of myself. I'm terrified I don't know how to recognize the line, what it takes to not fall flat on my face in the cesspool of never-ending sickness. So I sit here in perpetual excuse mode going nowhere with my life. Years are passing me by.

The only times I've ever changed my life were when I got so sick and tired of my own shit I couldn't handle me for one moment longer. Or I became so terrified of the impending consequences continuing to travel down the road I was on would yield, I didn't feel I had an option. So what I really want to know is, am I there yet?

Thanks for joining,
Leah

Check out the YouTube channel I started with my husband! We're vlogging about our experience with intermittent fasting...which I don't think will be the channel name much longer!
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Friday, August 9, 2019

The Reunion

My birthday came and went with a bang. The celebrations are still trickling in, actually, in the form of the twice-a-year get-together-for-our-birthdays with a couple of friends. This fortieth didn't hit me nearly as hard as my first fortieth, or even my second. I haven't noticed any new wrinkles. My gray hair isn't multiplying. No new aches or pains. Thanks to intermittent fasting, I've even lost eight pounds. So naturally I thought I could sail right into this next year feeling, well, not older.

Then I found out about my twenty-five-year high-school reunion taking place at the end of the month. Seriously? Like, I graduated from high school twenty-five years ago? How is that even possible? So I called up my best friend from back in the day and we started reminiscing, bringing up all sorts of people I haven't thought about in years. We talked about what they're up to, how life turned out, how many kids and what kinds of jobs, how many husbands or wives?

It was all fun and games until that feeling of having my life robbed took over. Sigh. I'd made such progress in taking responsibility for my circumstances. Showing myself compassion, not anger, for never having become a famous interior designer or cosmetics CEO. Accepting my reality for what it is and seeking to enjoy and improve my life instead of being angry over what getting sick has cost me. But hearing about what my contemporaries are up to depressed me. Everyone seemed to get the whole cake while I'm sitting over here with a sliver of pie.

The desire to crawl back in my hole of isolation rose up. This is hard, trying to rebuild after another bout with this strange sickness. What a nebulous and unpredictable existence. I drop out of life for years at a time, unable to physically and mentally engage with others in any sort of consistent fashion. Then I get "better" and start my juggling act: trying to get all the dropped balls of my life back into the air without winding up sick all over again.

But enough, really. Because this is it. That is my reality. Love it or hate it, I'm forty-three years old and cannot spend one more moment of my precious time and energy being angry at what is. It took this whole twenty-five-year-reunion trauma to remind me how damaging comparing myself to others can be to my self-esteem. So I'm shaking it off and proceeding on my way. Reminding myself that picture-perfect lives usually have their own source of discord. Mine just happens to be plastered all over the outside of me.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

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