prayer

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This Too Shall Pass… I Am Blessed.

Wow… Where have I been? It’s been over two months since I have written something… and to be totally honest, it’s been over almost that long since I have even visited my blog page. Six months ago, if someone would have said I would let that let that much time pass without viewing my page, I would have just ignored them because I would have thought to myself “NO Flippin WAY!”. Well, it’s true. Now that I’m here, that old familiar feeling is back. It’s the middle of the night, I’m sitting in the dark, on the couch with just the dim light from my laptop…. except this time… same couch – different house.

Where do I start? My life, my life, my life… Lord, I know You do not shoulder more than one can bear… I. Just. Am. So. Very. Tired. I really do try not to complain, I know there are people so downtrodden and their lives really suck, I know I have no right to complain…

Here’s the deal… let me bottom line it for you… I feel like I am starring in a country song where you play it backwards to figure out everything that has been lost (I should win an award for this one!)… I am just not mending… I don’t even know how to mourn anymore. I know hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units up and down the west coast and unfortunately so do my children. What started out as a good learning situation for my children when they were young, has turned out to be a continuous cycle of “Whose Funeral Are We Going to This Month?” … Scarred for life.

Where the hell was I going with this? Oh yeah… I was bottom lining it… let me get back to it…

So! Important in a Chronic Pain Patient’s life… Truth. Honesty. Well in anyone’s life, but more so in a chronic pain person’s life because you spend your entire life explaining your pain to people who do not believe you!

Shortly after the passing of my very close friend Steve’s passing, I lost my Godfather which seemed “suddenly” to me (way too soon as I just really wanted more time!)… Very close after that… we had a traumatic experience with a dog that we were really hoping to adopt (all of my 4-legged blogger friends would totally relate to my experience but Lumpy is in a happy home now!) Well, my son entered college and turned 18 and then my husband and I found out we needed to move out of our house we had lived in for over 10 years. We had less than 2 weeks to vacate. So! I found us a house to rent and we packed up our memories and our furniture and moved to our new “home”. That was the 1st week of November… and did I tell you I was on disability and went back to work the second week of September?

For those of you that were around my blog last year… I was blessed to get out and help pick the tree this year and my husband and I trimmed it this year!

I have this horrible feeling there is a big ass dam inside my body somewhere secret stored up and it’s just going to open up one day… God help the folks that are around on that day. Poor souls… I have a huge smile on my face right now… because Lord knows, all you can do is smile when you think about the poor souls who will have to deal with my ass when I unload on them!

So, now that you are caught up with where I have been and what I have been up to since the last time I blogged….

After all I have been through…

my family still makes me laugh at least once or five or ten times a day.

My parents are still with me and I thank God every single day for this.

I am blessed.

I still have my brothers, sisters and their families and my friends and their families around me.

I am blessed.

I still have my five senses.

I am blessed.

(Ummm I did not say I HAVE sense, don’t get crazy here).

My husband still wakes up every morning and goes to sleep to me.

I am truly truly blessed.

I have fibromyalgia, ADHD and chronic depression and yes…

I am blessed.

For me, it is important to remind myself to remember what I have and to do my best to stay positive. Please be positive with me. There’s enough negativity out there…

Thanks for reading! Stay cool…. and God bless all of you and Happy Holidays!

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I Am Enlightened… My Son is Graduating! I Can Do This, RIGHT?

Being a parent is so easy… When I was pregnant, I read all the books, I took in all the advice, I did EVERYTHING right… I was soooo prepared!! Man, I am the perfect parent!! Just call me and I will tell you all the answers. I am the leading advisor on all parenting issues.

Yeah, right!!! Ask my kids, they will tell you the real truth. My son is graduating from high school in a couple weeks and last night we had our “what are your plans for the summer conversation”. I am enlightened. I shouldn’t really call it a conversation. It was more of a one-way talk/defensive-response. I mean, I’m under no crazy assumptions here, I know I am not, let’s just say your Claire Huxtable/Mrs. Brady type of momma … but on the other hand I am also not your get-ready-for-primetime-Jerry-Springer-show momma either. I am smoothly on the side of “living-with-fibromyalgia-so-can’t-do-it-all-so-I-do-my-best-and-it’s-not-always-the-most” kind of mom. I am not sewing Halloween costumes or baking cookies or to be frank, doing laundry or making dinner or to really put it out there… cleaning the house or driving the children around. Are you still with me? Or did y’all quickly leave my post in disgust… that’s me, take me or leave me… I work full-time+, generally about 50-60 hours a week as a, let’s see my title this week is “Sales Operations Analyst”. I have two managers … I report to a Sr. Director of Global Operations and the VP of Sales at a hugemongous (yes I made that word up… and I like it!) corporation that is taking over the world one company at a time. I have worked full time since I was about 16. That’s 25+ years working full time, I’m just slightly tired sometimes. Until FMS hit me, I was definitely that type A personality. Now I am a type “a” personality… just give me the little “a”.

So, having said all that (remember… easily distracted)… I am enlightened. This is a difficult time for me. I want to stop the clock and just say “Wait a minute. I just want some you and me time to just chill. I know you are leaving, but I want to just hold on to you a little bit longer…” He, on the other hand, is ready to GO. I remember that time. I could not wait to get out of the house. I wanted to go, get out and not look back. This is a difficult conversation. Any words said between parent and child can be pretty hurtful.

Us. “We want you to get a job. We understand you are making money on your own, but we also want you to get some experience, have some structure, learn how to take direction within a management team, etc.”

Him: “ummmm, whatever. I don’t agree. I’d rather just hang out with my friends.

Us. “We know you are going out with your friends, we just need to say this so it’s been said… please make right choices about getting in the car with people who are driving under the influence”

Him: “I choose smart friends, why would they do that? I don’t appreciate you assuming they would do that.”

Us: “We just want to tell you our expectations for when you go to college, just on our mind…”

Him: “Why? Can’t you just tell me on our way when you drop me off in like three months, this makes no sense… I mean, why do you need to tell me now?”

Us: “You are graduating from school, you have a lot more time to contribute to the house, both inside and out. We would appreciate it if you would help out. These are not chores, these are things that need to be done, that we may ask you to do. You don’t have any chores that you do, so would ask that you help out a lot more until you leave.” (An alternative was given to pay instead of helping out…)

Him: “I’d rather pay than help.”

Anyway, I’m sure this is not drastically different than a lot of kids, but honestly. Selfishly, and I mean this, selfishly… life at work is so hard, why does life with him have to be so hard? He is so defensive and argumentative about everything that he disagrees with. He cannot discuss calmly, he just goes for the jugular. Aw well…

He was honest. He told us he’d rather spend his summers staying at the college than coming home… He said it’d be more fun staying at the beach with friends hangin’ out than coming home and getting nagged. Wow. That was enlightening. This kid has zero chores. I made a mistake somewhere not giving him chores and sticking to my guns on that one. Now any chore he is asked to do is an issue. On the other hand, this is also not so hard to understand. I would have felt the same way at his age. It’s is just hard to hear.

I am enlightened. Since he was a small child, he has been so stubborn. Very hard headed… to the point that we took him to counseling. I think I get it. Now. Just this moment. He is very serious about his stuff. Since he was a small child all the counselors have always said, “take away what’s important, whether that’s material or something like privacy, ie. remove the door from his room”. We have done that all his life. Now he pretty much hates us for taking that action. He KNOWs his stuff will get taken away, yet he will not give a shit. At the end of the day, he is pissed at us for all the shit we have taken away in his life. Still pissed. He remembers everything. So, why did he push it to the extreme? Why did we let things go so far? Life lessons. There is no damn “this is what you should do in this situation” reference book for each individual child.

In our children and godchild’s lifetimes, we have done our best as parents. We have made mistakes. We will continue to make mistakes. That is how life works. I know this, I accept this. It is painful for everyone involved. This is how we all grow.

I do know, my miracle child is smart, he is a genius to me, he is going to go exceedingly far in life. I am so proud of him. I love him. I trust he will make the right choices. That doesn’t mean I won’t worry, that’s just part of our DNA as parents, right?

Now begins the countdown… Lord have mercy. I can do this. He is ready. I will be too. He is a strong boy and when he walks out that door, he will be a b-b-b-….MAN! He’s been prepared. It takes a village and those he has been around the last 17 years have all given him the tools he has needed to become who he is. It’s up to him to take all of that and take the next step.

Y’all pray for me and give me your support… I already miss him!

Stay cool!

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Fibromites, Do You Wake Up Refreshed? Just Smile!

It is Saturday morning, 6:30am and I am sitting here wide awake. Ask me why… c’mon, ask. Come onnnnn…. Okay fine! Because it’s Saturday and I can actually sleep in (well not really, my daughter has a soccer game and I would have to get up in a bit anyway, but that’s not the point!). The point is, it’s Saturday and I don’t have to get up at this time and it’s like flipping backwards day as usual in my life and I am awake for no reason when I should be asleep and here I am wide awake! Whew! That was a long sentence! It is not as if I got enough sleep so I woke up feeling…. and I hate this word now –> REFRESHED (Wait a minute, I honestly have tried to take that word out of my vocab… so rewind, erase and replace hate with strongly dislike). How many fibromites actually feel “refreshed” when they wake up? (could you actually feel me doing the quote/unquote really strongly with my fingers that time? because I was, well as strong as these grip-less hands would let me). I mean, that is just not something I have felt in years. I wake up feeling like …. hmmmm … not sure I have thought about this … I wake up and think about how I slept, what hurts and will I be able to walk when I get out of bed and then I try and figure out what day it is. Now as my daughter says, “sharing is caring” so when y’all read that one, laugh with me, not at me… because, for example, today I woke up and really thought it was Thursday for some reason. I was pretty happy it was Saturday once I figured it out. Still laughing at me, I mean, with me? That’s alright, that’s why you visited my blog today, some pain relief. :)

So back to my point, most days I wake up feeling tired, half of those days along with tired foggy decides to join the party and maybe 15% of those days depression decides to crash the party and bring everyone down. So refreshed never really happens. I wonder what that’s like. You know when you are watching t.v. and that commercial comes on with the chick in her all white pajamas changing the all white sheets, and the light shining through the wall of glass behind her and she just looks all clean and refreshed? She is the anti-me. I ha… oh wait, really dislike her.

It’s really not all bad, it’s my reality. I’m just saying it’s Saturday and “hellllllooooooooo”, just thought I might sleep in today, but apparently I needed to get up and greet the world. Okay… seriously, I am smiling… I really am. I just realized it. I am crackin’ myself up as I write this… I have to take my own advice, right? Don’t take life too seriously… and THAT my friends is why I am up early. I needed to wake up and get an early start so I could smile and hopefully make you smile. If I didn’t get up early enough I would not have been able to write this before getting out of the house for my daughter’s game. That’s the start of my day… smiling. Awesome!

Hope you enjoyed my post. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you start your day with a smile!

Stay cool!

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How Do You Recover?

How do you start your day? If it starts out good or bad, does that determine how the rest of your day will go? Do you have the ability to turn your bad day around if and when it turns sour?

I tell you… with chronic depression, it’s like climbing up Mt. Everest carrying a 100 lbs. of cement on my back to turn a bad day — to good. Some days it just doesn’t work out. Some days the depression just hangs around like the cloud of dirt around Pigpen. Some days I am able to turn it around.

Yes, I take medication. I take medication to help me manage my pain, my depression and to help me sleep. I remember what it was like without medication. I know I don’t want to go back to those days. I hate putting these pills into my body. Every time I have to refill my pill boxes, I hate it. It cause me to go down a bit, but I have to remember that in the end it helps me. I sleep better, It helps me walk, work, spend time with my family… it helps me be human.

I worked about 70 hours this past week. I had a colleague tell me on my fourth work day at our business dinner, when I finally gave in and used my cane, that I didn’t need to use my cane, that I had walked fine all day without it. Nice. It still kills me to have to use a cane, and it’s always nice to get comments like that on top of my own pride. By Friday I could barely stand up. A few hours into the day I just lost it and during the meeting started to tear up. Really nice. Nothing like being in so much pain and so exhausted you just can’t do anything but cry… while at work with your entire management team.

How do you recover on these days? I’m not sure I did on those days. Exhaustion is difficult to recover from without just laying down and going to sleep. It’s Sunday now and I have spent the last 48 hours since coming home from work on Friday basically in a complete fog. I have either been asleep or laying down only to get up to go watch my daughter’s soccer game and to take her to the store. To go watch her game was so fucking painful, I really had a hard time even watching. So five days of work, 2 days of sleep. Normally tomorrow I’d be going back to work, thankfully I am on spring break with the kids. This has been my schedule for the last few months.

So… again… how do you recover on these days?

  • You pray
  • You rest
  • You give yourself a break
  • You relax and take care of yourself
  • You smile
  • You laugh
  • You remember it’s just one minute, one hour, one day… you don’t look past right now

That’s what I need to do.

Take care of you.

Thank you for stopping by… please share with me how you recover.

Stay cool.

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I Close My Eyes…

I notice I close my eyes a lot these days…

When I am in physical pain.

I close my eyes.

When I am hurt emotionally.

I close my eyes.

When I am mad.

I close my eyes.

When I am sad.

I close my eyes.

When I am frustrated.

I close my eyes.

When I am tired… exhausted.

I close my eyes.

When I need to think.

I close my eyes.

When my heart is feeling scratched and torn.

I close my eyes.

When I feel disrespected and I am about to lose my mind.

I close my eyes.

When I am talking and I’m not being heard.

I close my eyes.

When I need to take a mental break.

I close my eyes.

I find myself thinking what it must feel like to be blind…. memorizing my surroundings and taking mental note of what I want to remember. Visualizing in my mind the environment I want to keep in my memory if I am not able to see.

What is this about? I have no idea. I have just noticed that more and more in the last six months, it is a physical response that I have started to use. It was not something intentional, but also not something I decided I didn’t like. I like it. I like that it makes me stop and take a moment to close the world out and take a break. It tells me… “don’t lose control…. just take a moment and get it together.” This life or any life is not easy. God did not put us on earth for “easy”, we are all here for different reasons. If we accept that and stop fighting it, then life becomes easi-“er”.

I believe I know why I am here. I am put in situations and I help out where I am needed. In the end I am definitely rewarded. God is good to me. As long as I look at the big picture and don’t just think about “ME”, I do well. This life is not about me.

It’s interesting, I got up this morning, to write about something completely different. God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

I hope you enjoyed this post, please leave your comments.

Stay cool and have a happy Easter!

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Turn Up the Music!

I can remember when I was a teenager blasting music as loud as I could to tune the world out. It worked then and it works now. If I turn the music up to just the right decibel I swear it makes everything in the world seem juuussstttt fine. I remember waiting until my parents would leave the house and turning the stereo up REALLY loud, closing my eyes and just laying on the floor or writing in my journal or chillaxin’…

These days I have to remember, I’m the parent now. I’m the one who’s supposed to be saying “TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN!!!”. Sometimes, like right now, I want to turn the music up so loud the roads shake and the cars jump up and down. I want this damn pain to go away. I am so very tired. I am so frustrated. This pain makes everything so much harder. I hate that people feel bad for me. I never know what to say when my friends ask how I’m doing… I mean, I know I’m not doing fine, but I don’t want to sound like Wendy Whiner so I say “I’m alright”.  Sometimes I just want to say “I feel like shit, I feel like I just got a ‘beat in’ initiation into a gang… the fibro gang. What a fucked up gang that would be. I feel like I’m black and blue all over. I feel like my bones are broken. You can’t see any of this on the outside. I can feel it though. This fibro shit is crazy. I gotta tell you… you gotta have faith in your God to get through this shit. Excuse my language. I’m a little out of control tonight. Just feel the need to vent a little.

It’s difficult to keep all the things in life balanced and working. Life. Marriage. Work. Family. Personal. Health. Throw these things up in the air… which one do you catch first and which ones get dropped? I tell you, I roll out of bed in the morning and start working and I probably work a good 10-12 hours a day these days. I am actually pretty darn focused. Would I actually “catch” work though or would it fall slowly to the floor… interesting question. Scary proposition. Is it possible to catch all of them? It is impossible to multi-task, so something has to give. One can only focus on one thing at a time. Given there’s only 24 hours in a day (now you understand why most of my posts go out after midnight!) if 10-12 are spent working, 5-6 are sleeping, there’s roughly 6 hours left to focus on everything else. Hmmmmmmm. I better take a look at my Maintenance Plan I came up with from my Level II Pain class. I definitely have a problem of “pacing” myself. I can’t seem to work just a “little” bit.

I think I better turn up the music and think about this for a while…

Thank you so much for reading and please leave me a note. I love to hear from you!

Stay cool!