Wow, that last post was quite the downer, wasn't it? It's probably the most open and honest I have ever been in my life, and, while hard to share with the world, it also felt good to finally let that sorrow see the sun.
Today. Sigh. While I would love to say my world is sunshine and roses and that the hole in my soul has healed, it hasn't. Not fully. The scars I have left are no longer gaping wounds, but there are pits and divots and caverns that have never completely filled.
Am I all doom and gloom? Heavens, no. I am not as sunny as I once was, but I can still joke and laugh and see the beauty in the world around me. I see the darker spaces in-between, but the world is still a gloriously beautiful creation that I am happy to be part of. I still get down in the dumps, and I still cannot, even after all this time, handle stress, but then maybe I never really could. I recognize now that "fight or flight" panic is an issue I have had for decades, and not something simply brought out because of Jason's death.
I still need to learn to ask for help, but I have never liked doing so. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately (depending on the day) my health hit a point where I am now considered permenantly disabled. What does that mean? I have no choice but to ask for help with things I never used to. I will be honest and admit I absolutely hate that. Really, who wants to have to ask for help just to take a shower or to change their clothes? But my condition has also forced me to slow down and allowed me time to think. I wasted far too much downtime allowing myself to be pulled down in the dumps, but I can see how this time has also reduced my stress in many ways. It's odd to feel thankful in some ways for my condition allowing me time to try and mellow out, but I still wind up far too easily. A simple timed game on my phone can throw me into a panic so quickly it's scary.
I never did speak with a doctor about going back on that stress medication, and my condition (why am I dancing around this? I have multiple conditions- Fibromyalgia certainly knocks me on my butt physically as my body is basically attacking itself all of the time and my inflammation markers are wildly high. I also have a condition known as Forstiers or DISH where my bones and ligaments are slowly calcifying. I am a mass of bone spurs and my spine is fusing, which creates all kinds of fun, and the slow calcification of my ribs means I now use oxygen as I cannot often get in a full breath. Oh, and then there is the severe depressive disorder I vaguely mentioned in my last post. Yeah, I am a rollercoaster of fun). But my Fibro causes brain fog so bad some days (not that my memory retention was ever stellar) that I couldn't tell you what all of the medications are that I am on now, let alone what I took a decade ago. In my defense back then I had no medical insurance, so it's not surprising that I didn't follow through on my health.
But that was then, and we are talking about now.
Today is a good day. Tomorrow is questionable. Mentally I am still a bit of mess, though I no longer feel like I am going to fall to pieces. I have days where I wish I could have the freedom to scream and let out what does build up, but it's nowhere near where I once was. I am, however, in more physical pain than I ever have in my life. That alone sometimes make me snap when I don't mean to. Add my depression, which has its own anger issues, and my poor husband never quite knows what he's coming home to. Am I going to be in a good mood and be in only moderate pain or will greater pain and frustration that day override my verbal filter?
Thankfully I am much more happy than sad, kinder than mean, but Richard certainly puts up with a lot of abuse, which kills me. I love him and hate to hurt anyone, especially him and definitely not like that. I have spent far too much of my life dealing with verbal and emotional abuse from others and I am appalled to know that I add to that destructive cycle.
For so long I stopped caring about the things that I loved to do and I lost many of the things that once caused me joy. It is hard to start building that back up, and even harder when you cannot physically do as much as you want. I no longer drive and cannot walk for any distance, or handle uneven surfaces, which is hard for a gal who loved landscape photography. Lack of focus makes reading hard sometimes as I often forget what I read earlier. Embroidery or knitting is a do-when-you-can sort of thing, as some days my arms are too weak or my hands too shaky for anything requiring dexterity.
A recent move has allowed me the room to start cooking and baking again, which I LOVE. Sure, pots and pans and mixers are heavy and hard to wield, but every successful meal or bake is totally worth it.
Christmas, and the holidays in general are not the same. Perhaps that's just adulthood settling in, but I used to be so excited for this time of year. I still love seeing the lights and the tree and smell the scents of the holiday, but it not longer thrills me like they once did. I mourn for that loss of childlike wonder, but I cannot say that all is lost. I still prefer giving over getting, and remembering the true reason for the season, and that part of Christmas has not changed.
I have started physical therapy again, though its different this time. In Washington State I had access to a swimming pool with treadmill, while here in New Mexico I go to a therapy office that is noticably lower tech, but I feel as if I get more out of it here. Maybe because it's strength training, but whew, I come out of there feeling chewed up...in an oddly good way. I can certainly tell the difference between when I started and now, which gives me hope that I will be able to continue doing more for myself down the line. I would love the freedom of being able to climb behind the wheel and drive myself anywhere i'd like to go. I always loved going for a drive and miss it terribly.
I am slowly working back towards becoming a more well-rounded person. Is it because we now share a house with my father, where I feel like I can't be a lazy bum all day? Maybe. Goodness knows it's odd after so many decades on my own to live with a parent again. I love being able to see him, but there are definitely times where I feel like I am about to get into trouble. With my mood swings he has asked me twice now if I need to go to my room! It makes me laugh though, and once I really did go to my room in a self-imposed time out, which did help immensely. I guess our parents really do know what is good for us sometimes.
I still miss Washington, but New Mexico is growing on me more and more. I think it's because here in the house I am establishing a halfway decent routine for myself. I no longer sleep in the living room of a small apartment,and here I come into a large living room with windows all around, so I feel myself surrounded by nature, given that we have a lot of trees here and live across from a field. We're on the edge of town here, literally a 3-minute drive from Walmart/Sam's Club, but it's rural, so it's like we are living in the country in many ways. I can feel a lot of tension leaving me on my good days when I sit here and enjoy the sun on my shoulders. Our living room is bathed in sunshine from sunrise to sunset here, which is amazing. I still need to get outside more, but on a couple of good days I was able to haul my wheelchair outside on my own and back in again. I couldn't have done that at the start of the year.
So I take whatever good that comes my way, and try to muster through the bad as best as I can. It's still a daily struggle to juggle the responsibilities we have taken on here, and I do have my days where I worry we've bitten off more than we can chew, but I am happy, mostly. I remain positive, however, that there is much more happiness ahead as I continue to try and push forward. All forward momentum is good, and I no longer have days like I did as a teen or young adult when I wanted nothing more than to stop the ride and get off.
Yes, I am talking about suicide. Mental health has never been my strongest suit, and I readily admit it now. Yes, I have had far more days that were filled with sunshine and warmth and dizzying happiness than the bleak, and it's those I most often turn to now. I remind myself that even when I was at my lowest that there was always something good around me as well. And there was always something wonderful later that I realize I would have missed out on. Even on my bad days, where everything physically is a ball of pain and my mood descends to match, I no longer consider laying this mortal body aside voluntarily. I haven't been that low really since I left my twenties, and thank goodness.
I've tried therapy, and found it useless really because I had no idea what to talk about. I had one gal I liked, but we never got far as this was during Covid. It was distracting that on our video conferences that she would spend her time knitting. She listened intently, and had asked if it was okay, but I started feeling like I was going on and on to a acquaintance who was content to let me ramble as I was paying for taking up her time. Maybe I should look into it again, but, given my previous experiences, I wonder if it's worth the cost. And my outlook is not as dark as it once was, though it would be lovely to one day be able to set aside the constant stress I have beneath the surface. To be able to feel my shoulders relax for once, which they don't. I am always tense as if waiting for another bomb to drop. I look to my past and I can understand where much of it comes from, but I just don't know how to let it go even though I am no longer in the abusive and bullying situations I was once in.
My best therapy is to write, it always has been, so it's a shame that i've denied myself that outlet for so long. When I was young I repressed it because it was easier to do so than to deal with how others viewed it. That sounds confusing, doesn't it? I've had people in my life that were upset with how easily words would hit the page for me, and I stopped because one person was sad about it, and then later another was angry. You know what? To heck with that. I love to write, and I should stop holding myself hostage to the ghosts from my past.
I need to find a way to imbed this as deeply as I can that IT IS OKAY FOR ME TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THAT I LOVE TO DO. I also need to STOP COMPARING MYSELF TO OTHERS. We each take our talents and dreams to where we want them most to go. I cannot feel lacking because my work isn't the same as someone else's. And it's odd, now that I think of it, I stopped doing many things because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but then I look at other people's talents and feel jealous myself. So I stop developing because of someone else's jealousy and also stop because I am jealous myself of others?
Yeah, I am messed up, but better late than never to figure that out, right?
Okay, time to get off of the soapbox. I have dinner to start soon and baking I want to get done. But it's been nice to get this off my chest and work some of this out. Had no idea you'd be a phantom therapist when you started reading this post, did you? What matters most is that I keep putting one foot in front of the other and my eyes on the horizon, while still stopping to smell the flowers along the way. Or, as it's the holidays, the baking cookies? I'd have said Christmas pine, but I hate cutting down living trees to decorate my home with, no matter how nostalgically delicious they smell.
So here I am, hot mess that I am, but I am still alive. More than I have been in years, but still hopeful and hopelessly flawed. But at least I am still able to pick myself up from the debris and forge ahead towards the future and whatever it holds for me.
Albiet with my fingers crossed!
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