Est, Baby

My brain is a jumbled, churning whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Fifty urgent tasks ticker-tape through my mind at a frenzied pace. I've got so many different interests pulling on me, it feels like my limbs are being racked on a Medieval torture device. To compound my frustration, all this turmoil only leaves me utterly spent, exhausted, collapsed. I feel like I'm being sucked down, stuck to the earth, unable to get up off the floor. Sick or not, I've gotta get a grip! If I can't catch the whirling ball of my own reality before it crashes to smithereens, nobody will!

So I turned on the Werner Erhard documentary Transformation, about his infamous est seminars from the '70's and '80's. Last year his hard-core philosophy of personal-responsibility, wrapped up in a bunch of insults aimed toward the stupidity of humanity, helped me reign in my out-of-control life. Somewhere between now and then I regressed back to my old patterns of anger, bitterness and avoidance. Indulging those feelings is a mighty short road to total self-destruction. I've worked too hard, and come too far, to let a weak mind simmer away my progress into oblivion! 

Did watching the documentary transform me? No. Anyone with chronic illness knows life is too complicated to make a "decision" and get instant change. But Mr. Erhard's dogma helped. He reminded me so much more is in my control than I believe. The notion that ones reality is perceived by their emotions choked me up a bit. Man have I fallen back into that trap! His unrelenting belief that a person's life is their own responsibility, and theirs alone, was like salve to my aching soul. I realized that's precisely where I've gone wrong. Somewhere in the last five months I lost sight of the importance of owning my life, 100%, and not expecting anything from anyone. Things got so hard I was unable to be there for myself. I stopped standing on my own two feet and became a gaping hole of need. In fact, I've fallen on my ass and am being sucked down into the quicksand of my own creation!

Est. It is. It is what it is. What is, is. The past, which swirls together to create the present, isn't changeable. But the future, right now, is. Each moment is the future, and that is where the fork in the road emerges. Where I can go from victim to victor, angry to actualizer, stagnant to mobile, stuck to progressive. I can clear my mind, pick what's most important to move forward, and sink my hungry teeth into the juicy flesh of personal responsibility.           

Thanks for joining,

Leah

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I Meditated

I'm on the verge of cracking up, again. My constant and pervasive anger over pretty much everything is threatening to swallow my life whole, again. The burden of my reality has become too much to bear. Again. Realizing it's only been one year and three months since I sat in the exact same trough does nothing to focus my racing thoughts. In fact, it only grows my panic. Where on earth did I find the power to change my thinking and get my health to a stable place? My memory tells me juicing made me feel a lot better, and accepting reality for reality's sake reigned in my consuming frustration. I'm still juicing, desperate to regain a semblance of an immune system after my absurdly destructive move to California, but I've completely lost my grip on accepting my life.

When my eyes flipped open this morning negative thoughts swirled around my brain. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't face one more angry walk with the dogs. Another day full of frustrated glances at the rapidly diminishing hours left to complete all my responsibilities. And I absolutely, positively could not hand over another 24 hours to mentally bash the long list of people who perpetually piss me off. 

Desperate to step out of this destructive cycle, I pulled up some guided meditation on Spotify and listened. Then I took my walk, which wasn't angry, did yoga without getting mad about how late in the day it already was, and haven't devoted a single minute to scathingly lecture everyone and their mother on the ridiculousness of their overwhelming expectations. No, the sickness in my soul isn't cured, but my day has been amazingly peaceful.

Thanks for joining,

Leah         

Desperately Seeking Motivation

Hindsight is so golden. I'm sitting here desperately trying to regain the quality of life I worked so hard to achieve in Arizona. It's not working. I'm back to falling asleep after 2 AM and getting up at 11, keep injuring myself at the gym, and am so damn bitchy I'd do anything to get away from me! My discipline is sorely lacking and anger is back to defining the way I spend my days. Sigh. I've already danced this tango, and almost didn't survive it once! It was so much work, but I actually got to a place of ownership in my life, and felt like I had a modicum of control over my circumstances. And then I had to go and move back to California.

Despite the raging heatwave scorching the Southland, and my broken air conditioner, I don't regret the choice to relocate. I just don't know why everything had to go so seriously wrong for months on end. When I start recanting the litany of ills we've endured; movers not showing up, car accidents, broken appliances, flooded dining rooms, a sick dog, termites...and the list goes on and on...people tend to laugh at the absurdity. I wish I was laughing. Any one of those complications are stressful and time consuming. But everything strung together in a consecutive string knocked this Fibro patient over here on her ass. 

I don't know how long it's going to take me to regain my lost ground. When I wake up in the morning I'm mad. Then I remember I used to get up happy and full of purpose, which makes me feel desperate and abandoned. The only good thing is I'm reaching the end of my victim-complaining rope. Endlessly kvetching about my reality is getting old. I want to move forward! I want to contribute to the world's health and well-being, not gnash my teeth and pull my hair because life turned out a lot harder than I ever in a million years imagined possible. I want to succeed and accomplish and inspire our collective consciousness. I want to have a positive impact on my broken, hurting patient population. I want to help the world to understand what living with Fibromyalgia is like, and help Fibromyalgia patients survive the way this horrible illness can wreck a life. I want to do all this and so much more! Maybe simply writing it down, and making myself accountable, can be the first step?

Thanks for joining,

Leah  

If I Choose

“There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”  ~Jose N. Harris

I heard Samuel L. Jackson's wife once answered a question about the secret to the success of her forty year marriage with "amnesia." Apparently she got a lot of flack for her frankness. Personally, I think she's brilliant. So right on the money I had to tell my husband of thirteen years. We laughed, and wholeheartedly agreed with Mrs. Jackson. Of course other elements must be present for a long-term relationship to sustain, such as love, compatibility, respect and a desire to be there. But sometimes you just gotta forget the past. It won't ever change, and is so flippin' awful if the past must remain the present, a person can't endure. That is where this Monday finds me.     

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. It has to be. The utter futility of spending one more moment embroiled in the bitter past consumes me with such fervor I just can't do it anymore. I'm so sick of crying the same tired anthems! The same struggles over the same issues involving the same people and everyone's tried-and-true same behavior dysfunctions, most pointedly mine. Well stop the world, I want to get off. Every moment of the past thirty-eight years has brought me to right now. A state of complete rejection of what is. Not for acceptances sake, but for future sake. I can't take what is into tomorrow. Hell, I can't even take it into this afternoon! I must be free from the past that burdens itself upon me.

Every darn action I subconsciously take comes from a broken and battered soul. My reactions, capabilities, coping skills, efforts and intentions are all tinged by the hurt from the past. Every breath I take floods lungs reeking of fear and trepidation with the stale air of a present that won't ever change. But it can change, in this moment, if I choose. I can be free from the woman who came before me, the one who allowed anger and unfairness to rule the roost. If I choose. I can allow the snakeskin of contention to shed itself from my slithery underbelly. I can respond to life with gratitude and compassion. I can allow revolution to rage inside me, a lotus to bloom where my clenched heart used to reside. I've been blessed with many gifts in this life, some the result of intense hardship. What I do next is what I choose.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

The Dust Settles

Thank the good Lord in heaven, I'm finally coming down off my reign of crazy. Even if the nasty septic tank of circumstances I find myself sitting in makes me want to run right back into insanity's open arms just for a distraction. The biggest lesson I can glean from all of this mayhem is that I can't do mayhem! Unfortunately, most people don't get to decide when, where and what to be stressed about in life. It's kind of something that just happens, a biological reaction to too much uncertainty or too heavy of a demand. Who are those people that walk through life's storms with a smile of assurance radiating from deep within their soul? How did they get that way? Can I ever be like that, or am I destined to be the reactionary, defensive, self-destructive spirit I've always been? Inquiring minds want to know!

I'm learning so much about myself it's not even funny. While I've experienced one giant, rolling flare after another, I've also never been so healthy. Since I got sick, that is. Over the last year I've made an intense investment in myself and my health. I now know all that time exercising and juicing, gulping apple cider vinegar and cooking all my own unprocessed food without chemicals, along with a bevy of other neurotic health-nut habits, are why I'm still standing today. See, so many things went wrong over the last two months, in years past any one of them would've done me in and sent me to bed for a week. Life is nothing if not a double-edged sword, however, because not being sequestered in a dark room with no human contact allowed Miss Type A to keep pushing herself. And push to the brink I did.

Now it's time to center, regroup, claim my balance. If I think about everything I have to do to get my life back to a functional level, I freak out. It's too much! So I only think about the one or two things I can realistically accomplish that day, and promise myself the rest will be waiting for me tomorrow. Surprise, surprise, the rest always is. Perhaps my biggest hurdle right now is the all-consuming negativity my mind seems intent on stewing in. So I'm going back to basics, the same way I pulled myself from the edge of destruction last year. Enter good ol' fashioned avoidance! Let's just say I'm washing the dishes, and I start to get mad at the man who cut me off and made me miss my exit earlier that day. Within a matter of minutes I could be sobbing in a puddle on the floor, and cursing the woman who almost ran me over in the crosswalk, along with the dishwasher repairman who made my kitchen sink spring a leak and flood my dining room. And we haven't even gotten to the people I actually know yet! The only way to not give my life away to the unsavory actions of others is to acknowledge my anger is, if not irrational, totally over-inflated. Then ignore it, and move on to something that either makes me happy or demands so much concentration it's all I can do. Because really, at the end of the day, is an aggressive driver or sloppy repairman worth the cost of me?

Thanks for joining,

Leah

I Lost My Laundry Card

The second I noticed it missing my blood surged with panic. I began feverishly roving my eyes around the apartment. As I searched through the melee of my halfway-unpacked home, the instinct of survival known as flight or flight took over. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. Each purposeful step of my foot splashed puddles of trepidation in my wake. "Where is my laundry card?" I cried in a panic. While retracing my steps back to the laundry room, my mind raced with thoughts of the consequences of my negligence. I had $5 on that card, and it’ll take another $5 to replace the card itself. Why don’t I just take a $10 bill and throw it out the window, or set it on fire for my own amusement? How could I be so careless? Do you know how many things can go wrong when a person’s not paying attention? I can’t afford to be so frivolous!

And then I got a grip. I took five deep breaths and forced myself to stop anxiously looking everywhere the eye could see. After about five more minutes of ignoring my better judgment I decided to listen to myself. As my inner crack-head calmed down, the pensive frown on my face relaxed, knot in my stomach untied and heartbeat slowed to normal. I’d given up on my hunt, and was instead far more concerned with the absurdly fragile state of my parasympathetic nervous system. Why on earth did I get so bent out of shape over a lost laundry card? For crying out loud, it’ll either turn up, or it won’t. What good does freaking out actually accomplish, besides making me sick and mentally unstable? My anger at life’s unfairness flared when I realized the move from hell, followed by more calamity than most people see in ten years, left me so reactionary and damaged that misplacing my laundry card was enough to torpedo me into panic-survival mode.

This is the brittle state I’m left in to go rebuild my life. Ironically, in the five times I’ve moved since I got sick nine years ago, this one physically affected me the least. But with far more to do than time to do it, a very time-consuming regiment of diet and exercise to keep my symptoms at bay, and more unforeseeable problems springing to emergency status every other day or so, I’m spent. Beat down. Woman on the verge. Which is why it’s a wonderful thing my perpetually peeled-back eye unearthed the almighty missing laundry card a few short hours later. There it was, lying in the bathtub like it belonged there or something. Wow. Isn't it such a great thing I listened to my better judgment and decided to skip the worry?

Thanks for joining,

Leah           

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 

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             

Trauma & Trepidation

Last week when I found myself sitting on my kitchen floor organizing my cleaning products to avoid doing it, I realized I have a pretty serious problem. Given my poor housekeeping skills the last thing I care about is how Comet and Draino hang-out under my sink. But the thought of doing what I was blatantly avoiding filled me with dread. As I shoved the box of cleaners under the sink I knew the moment was upon me. My heart started pounding and sweat broke out on my forehead. When I walked over to my computer I felt dizzy and nauseous. Intense doom invaded every cell of my body. The certainty of total global annihilation made me want to fling myself off my balcony to avoid such an ugly demise.

I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. After enduring the financial devastation of five years of Fibro, followed by four years of not working, this is what happens when I try to pay the bills. With a sinking heart I realized I was dealing with a physiological response to an emotional reaction, caused by trauma. So now not only does going to the doctor invade my soul with so much fear and trepidation I act like a crazy lady, writing the rent check does, too. Is there no end to my problems? I mean come on now, it's been a struggle, but I never went homeless or starved. Sure, we lived outside our means for many years, and it almost took us down, but I do believe the worst is behind me. At least I thought my conscious mind did. Clearly I was mistaken.

The amount of real life I've avoided facing as a coping mechanism is astounding. Only now as I'm slowly able to add more responsibility back onto my plate do I realize how far out of control life got. I remember the early years of this illness, how I sat there and watched the dishes, laundry and life pile up around me, too sick to stand up and do anything about it. My type-A wanted to kill me! Learning how to ignore her ranting demands was a huge challenge. Somehow we co-existed, and I now find myself in a position to reclaim some of my lost ground. So today I faced the same heart-pounding, gut-wrenching reaction, and even managed to spend an hour laying out at the pool to avoid my dreaded responsibility. But when I came inside I poured a big glass of water, threw all the paperwork into a pile in the middle of the living room and took a bite out of my fear. And I survived. I'll count that as progress.

Thanks for joining,

Leah