How Life Unfolds

I am disgusted with the kind of housewife I have become. Nothing is ever clean. Something is always in a varying state of disarray. Bags of stuff, oh so much stuff. Other peoples stuff, and my ambitious dreams I thought I could tackle, but can't, piled high in the corner of the room. If the counter tops are clean, the floor is dirty and if the sheets are freshly dressed, the bathroom towels need changing. There is no oh-so-fresh feeling as I walk from room to room, fluffy just-vacuumed carpet pillowing every step. Each room dusted and shined and polished and fussed over down to the finest detail. Clutter concealed and exact-trinket-placement revealed. Oh I remember those days so fondly. When I could clean the bathtub AND toilet in the same day! And then mop the floors and polish the mirror and counter top and spit-shine the sink. Next move onto the bedroom, living, dining and kitchen, throwing the furniture polish, bucket and Lysol under the kitchen sink with an aplomb reserved for a well-finished task. And then leaving to enjoy the rest of my day. The simple act of even writing that has made me tired! Oh boundless and youthful energy, I miss you! I did not know how precious you were when I had you, and all I can do is look back and know I used you and abused you to my heart's content!

Is this good or bad? I can certainly say I lived, but was the kind of living I was doing worth it? What would I have done differently if I had known sickness was going to swallow me at 28? Its interesting how the life you envision for yourself as a child morphs so grotesquely around what actually happens. My plans went one way when I graduated from high school. But my anticipations were elsewhere. I dreamed of Louisiana, the romantic and mystical southern United States. The bayou, French Quarter, Burbon Street, vampires! All the mythical legends I had grown up on. I was even accepted to the University of New Orleans. Regretfully I lacked the guts to transplant myself 2,000 miles away from all that I had ever known. I stayed in my home state, satiating my quest for travel and adventure with the promise of a semester abroad in Europe. That never happened, though. I moved away to college, met a great guy, got into debt, drank a lot of beer and fell in love, in that order. I graduated and we spent the first 5 years of our marriage with my husband working his way towards his bachelors degree (see during his college years he just did the beer part, not the college). And then the next 5 years I have been ill. How many times can I look back at the "turning points" in life? Those pivotal moments you recall and see the fork in the road with amazing clarity. A fork that was obscured from view when the choices actually had to be made.

What I got is nowhere near what I thought it would be. That is what happens when you live life, I suppose. I always pictured children and a career and a white picket fence for my future, certain I was going to take the path most traveled, of least resistance. But somewhere along the way I stepped off and started forging my own. And then this illness hit and forced me into a terrible offshoot all alone on this long and windy trail of Fibromyalgia. So believe it or not, each floor I mop shiny, each buffet I buff clean, is one step closer to normalcy. A hacksaw through the brush to find the path of my existence. What I had decided my life was to be about, not Fibromyalgia's dictating claws directing me. And lets face it, if I have not come to terms with a messy house at this point on that long and windy trail, then I really have learned nothing at all.

Thanks for joining.
Leah

How Bad Do You Want It

I live in Arizona and my home was included in the dust storm last week. This left my patio looking terrible. Everything was powdered in this super-fine gray dust. It was messy and abundant. So last night I decided to re-arrange the patio and sweep it all up. My dear husband was cooking dinner and I kept calling him to come out and pile the leaves and dead bloom out of the dark corners, convinced it was going to stir a pissed-off scorpion or horribly big and poisonous spider. After an excessive amount of sweat and dirt the patio was shining and plants were in full bloom, all remnants of dead leaves and dust storms removed. I wake up this morning and as I am putting on my running shoes I spot a grasshopper(?) just kickin' it on the end table in my living room. And I am genuinely and pathetically really freaked out. I take my Spanish textbook and throw it on him twice. I miss. It is still alive and seems to be between the sofa and table now, still alive. I leave on my run with Yorkie & Porkie, hoping I can find it when I get back. 

We come home and he is back to sitting on top of the end table, chillin' in the thrown shade of the failed Spanish book. I stand and stare at Mr. Grasshopper(?) for a while, considering my options. I could not just leave him there, able to run all over and even get ON ME! Besides it was big and I was only really guessing it is a grasshopper. It could be a flying roach or miniature bat for all I know. Heaven knows I had never seen a living dinosaur before my encounter with the Javelina's! So I decide I don't actually have to kill it. I can just contain it. I stand near it with an empty plastic container for a while and in a sudden rush of bravery, brought on by convincing myself I could shoot an intruder if in mortal danger, I slam the plastic jar over the grasshopper(?). Phew, he is contained! The book goes on top of the plastic container and there he will sit until my husband comes home from work. I do frequently peak in as to his whereabouts whenever I pass by, though.

Now however lame or stupid an analogies this is, it gave me a thought. HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT? How badly do you want to reclaim your life? How much maneuvering and trying and succeeding and failing are you willing to do? How much will you fight, if pushed to the bottom? How much will you challenge, if you find your way to the top? Fibromyalgia is a horrible illness. I was disabled  and broken and had absolutely no view of the horizon, the end of the abyss. I cried and screamed, throbbed in pain and zoned on the television for years, barely able to keep a storyline straight in my head. I found the start of my journey and tripped and fell as I struggled a million times just to stand up and take one step on that road. And my life is a million times better now. Hardest thing I ever did. I found strength I never even dreamed I had. So yes this morning as I explained my exploits with the grasshopper(?) on the phone to my husband he roared with laughter. What was so funny? "Honey, you can beat a debilitating disease, but you can't kill a grasshopper?" he struggled out through choked laughter. Touche my friends. Touche. 

The Student Becomes The Teacher

I never wanted a career in cosmetics. In fact I think I had a bad attitude most of the time I had one. I had gotten so miserable that one day I decided I either needed to look for a new job or change my attitude. Since I am loyal to a fault if it is convenient for me, I knew the attitude had to change. I stopped paying attention to the aggravating aspects of retail management and focused all my attention on what I enjoyed. Makeup artistry, face time with my clients. Growing and developing my staff. And of course once I turned positive things got a whole lot easier. I was doing so well I was offered a promotion. I did not want it, though. My boss pushed me into it. See he needed someone to oversee his stores while he exercised (or exorcised) his corporate responsibilities. I was the most capable and successful manager he had to pull from. He was a good salesman. And somehow he made the deal happen and I entered the "executive" realm. It was much better than being on the front lines; engaging with that customer, tallying each sale, remembering to call the people on your list that should be due for a new moisturizer soon. No, now I collected daily sales tallies from 8 stores and expensed things and had a mess of untrained counter managers struggling to run a business with no support. So I would go and visit these stores and try and impart my wisdom to this sparse and constantly turning collection of employees. And out of the 8 managers I supervised there were 2 that took what I gave them and used it.

The first was a girl who wanted my job. The job I did not want and my boss pushed me into. She was so pissed off she had been passed over for this promotion, and I had been well prepared for her  potential retaliation before my first visit. But I walked into that store that day and this girl was a complete sweetheart! And was naturally my strongest competitor. So after my first day of team-selling at that counter yielded their best sales day ever she set out to beat me. That worked out great for me! She took an awesome and creative interest in running her business and raised sales like you would not believe, which only reflected positively on yours truly. The other was a girl I struggled with. So young, too young to be a "manager" in my opinion. But I saw this girl a lot more often. And slowly but surely the leader in her emerged. And the business woman began to build herself. And yes I am unbelievably proud to say the last month or so I lived in San Francisco she had been promoted to my old executive position, so technically was my boss! I was so proud of her. I beamed from ear to ear and felt like I had graduated a daughter from college.

And I have seen it here. I have seen a select few take the tools and tricks and wisdom I am constantly blathering on and on about and do something about it. One has tested positive for the same viral infection that was responsible for my CFS (not all cases have the same root cause). And she is on the same anti-viral drug that gave me back my energy. It is brutal treatment but she is fighting, oh how she is fighting! And I have seen a whole host of others stand up and change doctors or stop hanging out with harassing family members or get themselves back in school so they can do a job that is not as physical. I have seen it and it does my heart good. And I want to do more, oh so much more! And I will get there. I will get there putting myself, my health, first. And pursuing my awareness efforts to the best of my ability. So while The Fibromyalgia Crusade may be progressing really slow, it is only gaining momentum. Its just running at a Fibro's pace.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

The Living And Breathing Entity Of Marriage

This last weekend was especially rough for me. 3 full days of my husband home always wanting to do stuff. So much stuff, all the time. When we wake up in the morning its a quick dash to the dog park before the blazing Arizona sun rises high and hot in the bright blue sky. A snappy detour to the coffee shop and home for breakfast. Then pick the day and I will tell you the activity. Pool time, Costco, the mall, the gym...oh the list goes on and on. We are always rushing somewhere. And it is with great intensity and urgency my husband lives his life. This is the man who works 14 hours a day, then leaves work to work-out. I have a really hard time understanding how he does not want to crash or decompress after his intense and grueling work week, but he feels the weekends are the only time he has to live his life and wants to pack as much as humanly possible into each and every second.

You can imagine it does not take much time for him to quickly outrun me. My knee-jerk reaction is to either crumble into a blithering mess, still so frustrated and angry I am not the healthy girl with equal energy I once was, or get pissed off and irritated at him for being so hyper and demanding as I struggle to make him understand something he has already understood for years. And that train that is never late! The guilt train. The whole I have ruined his life song and dance. So Tuesday evening rolls around and I have myself pretty worked up. He comes home to a terse wife all uptight and bent out of shape, spewing anger and blame, but only about ¼ of that directed his way. Oh the frustrations! My life, where has it gone? The days of level 8 pain all day every day are long behind me. Being unable to leave my house for more than 30 minutes at a time is years in the past. So what on earth am I still bitching about?

And much to my surprise he told me he was having a lot of the same feelings I was! He was glad I had brought this up because he had felt the tension, the un-meshing of two lives that are deeply intertwined. And it was bothering him too. So we talked, breaking the silence of unsaid frustrations and desires. And we admitted we needed some work. Yes he did, and yes I did, but more importantly, the marriage did. The living and breathing entity marriage becomes, standing independent all on her own. She was the one that needed the attention right now. He agreed to step back and allow me some "me" time on the weekends and I got him to promise he will not hold his life back because I cannot always join him. We worked through our discord. Gave our union a little oil change and set back on the gameboard of life. And when he came home from work yesterday we had a wonderful evening together. Laughing and being silly in a way I had been too uptight to relax into. Chilling out and mellow in a way he had been too rushed to realize the necessity of. It was good.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

235th Birthday

This was an insanely busy 3-day weekend. They tend to go that way when I am frequently spazzing out over one stupid thing or another. Monday night arrived far too quickly and was settling onto my chest heavy and full of the "have to's" of responsibility. I have to make my husband's lunch for work tomorrow. I have to do the dishes. I have to go to bed early so I can beat the heat for my morning exercise. Basically, I have to practice a modicum of self discipline in this never-ending quest to get my life back on track. And not indulge the path of least resistance my sore and aching body wants so badly to sink into. So we are getting ready for bed last night when we hear the loud !!BOOM!! of the first Independence Day fireworks. The dogs took off like a shot, barking and pouncing with all their might. I step outside onto the patio to see if there is any chance of a show far off the distance to take a quick peak at before we go to bed at (gulp and gasp) 8:30pm. SURPRISE! There is a magnificent show bursting forth right before my eyes! I holler at my husband to come join me and he toggles between in and out, trying to watch the show and soothe Porkie, who is totally freaking out. He finally gives up and goes in and I proceed to peacefully watch a beautiful fireworks display by myself on the close of this 235th birthday of the the U.S. of A.

And as my eyes are dazzled my mind wonders into the vacancy of my memories. I conjure up all sorts of ghosts from many of my 4th of July's past. I remember as a little girl we would buy the coolest box of firecrackers and my dad would set them off and all the girls would dance around the street like ballerinas with our sparkling sparklers clenched in each fist while the boys set off spinning wheels of fire whipping unpredictably across the ground. I recall the summer after high school, spending the night sleeping on a kayak parked on the sand of Mission Beach in San Diego. The evening spent traipsing the town with our underage liquor bottles wrapped in brown paper bags, fooling no one. I thought of all the years I spent in my home town, my parents somehow finagling a parking spot close enough so we were nestled in the cool grass on a rolling hill, watching the light display high above our heads as fireman dotted the perimeter, extinguishers at the ready. I fondly smiled when I thought of San Francisco. Foggy San Francisco. How many shows did we watch while the clouds and fog turned red, and then blue, and then green? Morphing into a blurred mess they would finally give up on it. But the years the weather did arrive clear and bright, oh those were priceless! We would climb up on the roof of our apartment building and lie flat on our backs as massive bursts of light and color fell in the sky right on top of us, the instinct to flinch gradually and unnaturally relaxing. We viewed the twin show taking place across the scenic San Francisco bay. And eventually we would make our way to the bar downstairs. There was always a party, and one year my husband and I were having so much fun with these Scottish tourists we met, we decided we were going to leave with them on Thursday to go back to Scotland! We ran around the bar all night telling anyone and everyone who would listen that we were going to Scotland on Thursday. And when we woke up the next morning with their phone numbers programed into our cells and flight information for Thursday to Glasgow pulled up on the computer screen we laughed. Yeah, work was real fun that day.

And then I thought of last year. And how by the months end I had evaded death with two strokes behind me and a whole other illness on top of all the others to throw into the mix. And I think of the girl I was one year ago, the girl with no future knowledge this was going to happen. Still with a spec of innocence left. Still believing life would get better, eventually. Feeling I had been kicked down as low as I could go, and the rebuilding phase was finally in place. And as I watched the beautiful display of popping lights and sparkling ribbons sailing through the air, solitary, with only my thoughts and myself, big fat tears started to roll down my cheeks. I was overcome with emotion. Good and bad. Grateful to be alive but angry I was even in a position to be grateful for something so taken for granted. Proud of the progress I have made in restoring wellness to my life. Yet bitter about the backlash the treatment for the strokes has left me with, and how much hard work it is to get it back. Ditsier, heavier, forced to quit my job, a few more crinkles and wrinkles. But the growth in my body and soul! In my heart and bones, that has been my golden goose egg in all this madness. For it finally forced me to set down my makeup brush and pick up my pen and start writing. Something I had spent my lifetime ignoring that brought me great joy. And this writing has brought together a whole bunch of people, and given me purpose and passion in my life. And as 25 bright simultaneous bursts of light lit the sky and marked the show finale I dried my cheeks and went inside. I felt cleansed, and absolutely certain I had made the most of my life so far. I had lived. So as the country celebrated its 235th birthday I sit in anticipation of the 35th of my own. For if anything has come of this I have earned every candle on my cake, every single one.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

Do I Fall Or Do I Stand Tall

I have been fearful lately. I have not been dwelling in possibility, but reacting to the present. And last night I burst into tears because I have been mentally re-creating my past, when I lived. When I was a real person with a job and friends and a life. For some reason the acute sharpness of what it felt like to be that girl smacked me across the face yesterday and made me so sad. I lamented this career that I never wanted, the last job I held that left me in constant fight-or-flight for a year and probably precipitated this bloody Fibromyalgia, was in fact my glory days. I cried to my husband that I wanted to move back to a city where people live on top of each other and were smushed into public spaces and the seekers reside. Those not content to duplicate the experience of their childhood, but search and look for a place to be themselves, no matter how extreme or odd or foreign or normal they appear. A place where I shared friendship and plans and a destination. These wide open spaces and sweeping flower studded suburban avenues I have now, its too much space for me! Too much vast room to live and explore and get lost in myself. I need to be smack-up beside society, people, the world!

Oh surely this is when faith is the hardest. Not in the beginning, when things are exciting and new, possibility  is endless. Or when that amazing opportunity has come to roost and success is pounding on my door. But it is in the middle. When that long and lonely road in-between is walked. Steady and slow, faithfully plodded. No immediate savior in front of me, but beyond that next bend in the road, certainly. I hope. And still I walk, sightless. Knowing and believing that the desires God has placed in my heart are the purpose of my existence. And walking that path with blind faith in the future while the present is sucking into a vacuum, that is when distraction taunts my vision. That is when I stumble and fall. And get all scared and worried and doubtful and negative. That is when I start turning my life upside down to try and shake out the piece that just does not fit, chronic illness. I start ripping at the fabric and tearing at the seams and trying to fashion it into a new body, new mind, whatever I need to take this away! WHAT AM I DOING TO BE SO SICK AND HOW DO I STOP IT?

Research is showing that whatever combination of trauma, genetics and infection has caused Fibromyalgia, its imprint on our brain is permanent. Our central nervous system is forever altered, morphed from normal to damaged, and not going back to factory recommended settings anytime soon. So we, as a patient body, have to learn how to do better! We have to learn how to live with this. How to manage it and re-define our life so it fits in. Not succumb to it, but master it. I have to stay on this path. The good fight, tunnel vision to the finish line nowhere near my horizon. And I will be one who walks in possibility, in the dawning of a new day. I put my guts and glory into every march for survival and revel in the win at the end of every battle. Victorious. For I believe they will one day figure out how to heal us, return those factory recommended settings to normal. But until that happens I am not throwing my life to the dogs, either.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Happy 4th of July, the good 'ol US of A!  A new blog will publish on Tuesday, July 5, 2011.