The Writer Who Doesn't Read

The cook who doesn't eat, the dog trainer who's never owned a dog, the marriage counselor who has yet to be married. I mean honestly, how effective can one be? Yet for a number of years I fell into the aforementioned category. I was a writer who didn't read. I could list my litany of excuses but that's not the point. What matters is my apathy was rewarded quite painfully. I spent years writing a novel. Then I had some people read it and realized I had made an excessive amount of mistakes and needed to rewrite it. So I did, then I tried to find an agent and my manuscript garnered absolutely no interest. So I rewrote it again and joined a writer's group. Within a few months I realized the mistakes my beta readers had pointed out were the mere tip of the iceberg peeking through the surface. The foundation of my book was a hulking mess. I had made a disastrous point-of-view mistake, what's considered a fundamental flaw in the structure of a novel that usually requires a(nother) rewrite to fix.

In my defense I read voraciously in my younger years and literature had evolved quite a bit since then. Not that I would've known, seeing as I didn't read. Which is why I was staring at the prospect of writing the same book for the fourth time. A notion which made me vomit a little bit every time I thought of it. Nevertheless, I persisted. I think it was upon presenting my fourth chapter to my writer's group that another major issue resurfaced. I had so many characters and storylines going on that I wasn't effectively representing any of them. Why was I trying to pursue a career I had absolutely no education in?

Taking a bite out of my original idea and chewing on it for a while, I devised a way to split my book in two. My initial objective had been to write a story about a girl who gets fibro and it rips her life apart. In order to accurately represent the experience, I gave her a full year of normal living to prove she wasn't "crazy," just damaged like everyone else, followed by a series of physical catastrophes (what we call trigger events) to highlight the fallacy of the "fibro's a psychological problem" conspiracy. Redrafting, I decided to make her sidekick the protagonist during that year of normalcy and basically write the prequel.

At this point it was painfully clear I needed to become acquainted with my contemporaries. I read a few books but didn't really know what I should be reading. So I joined a book club. It was 2019, around the time I was trying to pull myself from the isolation of my last relapse and rejoin life. Ohhh I felt like an alien. Luckily this book club was of the "bring a bottle of wine and some pot luck" variety. The liquid lubricant helped ease my social anxiety and eventually book club became the highlight of my month. So I joined another and was forced to discover audiobooks. Because who on Earth has enough time to lie around reading two books a month? Certainly not me. I was trying to write one, remember?

In 2020 I read 86 books. Audiobooks became my lifesaver back in March when lockdown was mandated and my husband started working from home. I could slip on my headphones while doing housework and not have to listen to him shouting into the phone all day. What joy! Not only that, my writing has improved exponentially. I have since moved on to a more professional writer's group and am happy to say I just submitted chapter 23 for review. Not that my manuscript doesn't need polish, but it seems the nuts and bolts of writing fiction no longer elude me. 

If you're so inclined, drop me a comment to let me know about your reading or writing journey!

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Chronicles of F.I.B.R.O.

Well hello there. It's been nearly a year since I last posted a blog. Is it too dramatic to say that between February 7, 2020 (my last post) and today, the world has pretty much flipped on its head? I don't think it is.

The break did me good. It's not like I haven't wanted to write in all this time. I just haven't known how to keep writing a blog centered solely around having fibromyalgia. Back in the day when I started blogging I was a very sick girl. Sick was the only way I knew how to relate to the world. My days were spent in a defensive huddle trying to fend off everything life hurled at me, a perpetual victim too burdened to take charge. I still have those days but thankfully that is not every day, anymore. Once I gained a semblance of control and found some stability, I was able to branch out and start moving forward. My worldview expanded and for a while there I was even hurling toward the stars. I believed I had conquered fibro and "that phase of my life" was behind me. Then it became very hard to write this blog.

Can I pick myself up off the ground and stop laughing, please? Because it wasn't long before I tumbled back down to hell and all that progress I thought was mine forever vanished in an instant. I relapsed. And with the physical relapse came an immense depression. They both took me years to recover from. Somewhere along the line I realized talking about my feelings was helping to keep me sick. So I stopped. It was easier to shift my focus to doing something else than feed the immense negativity threatening to swallow me whole. So what on Earth was I supposed to blog about then?

What a decade it has been. Throughout all of these ups and downs, I've grown tremendously as a person. Be it age or experience, my swings aren't as wide and lows don't dip nearly as deep. This has allowed me to pile the plate of my life high with a variety of different interests. They keep me marching forward regardless of the fluctuating state of my health. So how, given the many changes I've experienced over the last ten years, do I keep writing a blog solely about being sick? My answer is I don't. I write a blog about experiencing the world as a person who is sick.

Welcome to Chronicles of F.I.B.R.O.: a chronicle of my journey to find inspiration, balance, resilience, and optimism. I'm an aspiring novelist, rapacious reader, devoted dog mom, dedicated wife, avid health seeker, wine enthusiast, and commentator on life. All fit into a package who lives with chronic illness.

If so inclined, please drop me a comment and let me know how you are doing!

Thanks for joining,

Leah 

Stupid Society

The Super Bowl commercials this year were dumb. Usually they're funny, or poignant, or heart-tugging. This year exactly two of them made me laugh and two of them made me tear up. That's it. Everyone's been raving about The Irishman. All the billboards told me it got 9 Academy Award nominations for best picture! I watched it and was furious I wasted three-and-a-half hours of my life on such a pointless journey. Aside from Al Pacino's acting, I was not impressed. I'm sorry, were the women even invited to speak? Yet this is the stuff everyone thinks is groundbreaking...

I'm constantly on my own case for not engaging with society. Write a blog, I tell myself. Connect with people. Reach out. Go on Facebook. Post on Instagram. Tweet something funny or silly. None of it's that hard. Yet I don't. I remind myself that there are people in the world who care about me and I make no effort to reach into their lives. Why can't I force myself to engage with what's relevant? Is my social estrangement even necessary anymore, a condition of my ailments, or is my self-absorption pure habit. I'm not depressed. Is this a symptom of long-term bitterness?

But maybe it's not me. Maybe my Super Bowl Irishmen experience showed me the world has just gotten stupid. No wonder I don't want to engage. I don't want to dumb down to intermingle with mainstream society. I'd rather sit in my isolated existence and write a book, praying one day it's good enough for people to read. People in the world I've completely lost touch with. Don't worry, the bigger picture of my conundrum isn't lost on me.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Supplement Yourself

I've always wondered if nutritional supplements work. I started on them in 2006, the year I was diagnosed, and have tried pretty much everything under the sun since. There's no way to really know if anything is doing anything. I don't know what's malfunctioning in my body, giving me fibro in the first place. So how could I possibly know if a specific herb is helping a specific problem caused by I don't know what? My pre-surgery experience gave me some answers.

My doctor instructed me to lay off herbs and fish oil for two weeks prior to my surgery. Science doesn't know how they impact bleeding. Most vitamins, minerals, and amino acids were fine. So per her instructions I stopped taking milk thistle, turmeric, resveratrol, spirulina, and fish oil. I stayed on magnesium, potassium, lysine, vitamin D, and a probiotic. By the end of the first week my flare had taken me over. It was the kind of flare I get when I'm in a much sicker overall state. I hadn't had one this severe in months, possibly even a year. Of course I throbbed and ached, couldn't sleep, and found it impossible to keep my eyes open for the better part of the day. But all of that paled in comparison to the mental takeover. I became absolutely convinced there was no point in continuing to live. Surgery was a waste of time and money. I'm such an unimportant member of society, why was anybody squandering their efforts on me? I was terrified it was going to increase my pain or create more problems than it fixed. I wondered if it was going to kick me into another five-year relapse, which is not outside the realm of possibility. The world became a dark, cold, awful place I was certain I didn't possess enough strength to survive. I actually called my mom and told her the devil had taken me over and she probably shouldn't come out from Arizona to help assist me. I had no way to guarantee my mind would perceive anything accurately. The last thing I wanted was to permanently damage our relationship. Lord knows I've done enough of that.

Fortunately for me during this entire experience of mental anguish, I couldn't take a full breath to save my life. That's one of my earliest symptoms of this illness I don't experience very often anymore, the inability to breathe. The whole time my mind was folding in on itself, my lungs were rejecting air. It was an astounding physical reminder that my emotions were not coming from me, they are a manifestation of my illness. My physical impairment was so strong I couldn't ignore its relevance. Perhaps that's the only thing that got me to surgery day without losing it completely, the constant reminder every time I tried to take a breath that something was seriously sick inside me.

The day I came home from surgery I started on my full regiment of supplements immediately. I haven't dipped as emotionally low since. I haven't flared as badly since. I haven't been unable to breathe or want to obliterate my own existence since. No, I don't know what's wrong with me, what fibro is, what's actually causing these problems inside my body. But after my surgery/supplement experience I'm more convinced than ever that my potions and herbs make a tremendous difference.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

And So I Try

I'm on a mission of self-improvement. The life I'm living isn't one I want to keep investing in. Instead of continuing to make excuses for myself, all the while growing increasingly more miserable, I'm determined to do something about it. Concurrently I have a chronic illness that kind of does what it wants regardless of how well I take care of myself. Which these days isn't all that great. The result is my life is pretty much a joke. What can I do but try?

This is a good example that kinda sums up my reality. It concerns my lack of regular exercise. I used to be in shape and while I'm not anymore, I'm still capable of getting through a yoga or weightlifting session before coming home to die in private. When I had surgery my doctor said to take two weeks off all exercise. Last Monday would have been 17 days post-surgery. It was also the first Monday in the new year AND decade. Didn't everybody plan on exercising last Monday? Well I didn't do yoga until Friday, when my fibro pain got so bad I had no choice but to force myself through an agonizing practice, the relief I anticipated afterward my ultimate reward. Except the pain emanating from my low back ever since is not a reward, it's a disabling punishment. Now I'm a rotation of heat, ice, and ibuprofen who can't get off the sofa. Sigh. I tried.

On a good note here's what I did last week to move my life forward. I joined both the library and a second book club. I set my alarm for 10:30 a.m. every morning. I resumed drinking coffee right after waking up instead of waiting. While it's giving me more energy in the morning, and more of a drive to start my day, it's wreaking havoc on intermittent fasting. Yes, I've gained a few temporary pounds back. Also I've started listening to this really hardcore, ex-Navy Seal, excuses-don't-exist motivational speaker while I put on my makeup. I don't know what he's doing to my brain but at least I'm putting on makeup. And I'm writing this blog. Knowing I had to put something on these pages kept me accountable. I can't yet tell if it's stemming from sheer embarrassment or an honest desire to improve myself, but with week one and some tiny accomplishments under my belt I did what I set out to do. I tried.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Hello Again My Old Friend

It's January 3rd and I'm starting to write this at 3 a.m. So I guess that answers my question, new year same me. I stopped blogging in August after I got hit with another health hiccup. I kind of stopped doing everything involving other people except going to my monthly book club. Talking to strangers about a neutral topic is fine. But people I know, well, it's too hard to be sick and an actress at the same time. I'm weary of the game, pretending I'm okay regardless of what's really going on. Like, who has that in them after fifteen years? Not me. But who only wants to hang out with strangers who don't really know who you are? Ugh. Reality.

Unfortunately the mental result of withdrawing from people has been pretty catastrophic. So once again I'm forcing myself to reach out. Untangle the mess that is my life. Let people know I'm alive. I did manage to do something worthwhile in 2019. I wrote a novel. After my stint in the ER in August, I decided if I were to perish I needed something to show for myself. So I shut out everyone and everything and wrote for like 15 hours a day, six days a week. I'm now in the process of turning the rough draft into a first draft and boy did I do a rush job! But the essence is recorded and I have the raw material ready to be formed into something beautiful.

This isn't the book about a girl who gets fibro that I set out to write nearly a decade ago. I already wrote that book twice and made so many mistakes I needed to start over a third time. Which proves I can effectively sit here and write books to myself for the rest of my life and accomplish absolutely nothing in the real world. Scary thought. Starting the same book for the third time was awful. I was weary of my characters and bored with their choices. Then I realized I was telling too much story in one story. Sweet relief! Still passionate about my original idea, I decided to write the prequel. This book is about a famous feminist in her 60s who decides to look for the child she was forced to give up for adoption as a teenager. Little does she know, her daughter looked for her decades ago and did something terrible.

In order to sell this book I have to edit my rough draft, get back to writer's group, reignite my social media, hire some test readers, edit more, solicit an agent, deal with epic amounts of rejection, land a publishing contract, promote the hell out of me and the book, deal with epic amounts of criticism, and somehow be lucky enough to have all of this actually happen. Exhausted yet? I am. How on Earth is a woman who can barely function as a nonfunctional housewife supposed to do any, let alone all, of that?

So here I am. Ground zero. 2020. New decade, new promise, new hope. I have to rebuild myself from the ground up. I had surgery the week before Christmas and am still a little under from that. My lifestyle habits are atrocious. Admitting all of this is embarrassing. And incredibly liberating. Laying myself and my dysfunction out once again is proving cathartic. Hopefully taking this blog along on my journey becomes an effective tool to help turn the ship of my life around and stop spinning my rudders in the muck of sickness and isolation. 

Thanks for joining,

Leah