Each new week brings new trials and tribulations with this oh-so-delightful disease. This week I’m beginning to feel like I’m losing my mind. But I think that’s a good sign. I believe I’m reaching a point in my recovery where I now feel well enough at times to be miserable being too sick to get out of bed. For months I had no problem laying in bed like a vegetable watching re-runs of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘Family Guy’. But I was too sick to care. Suddenly, I’m caring more and more.
There are so many areas of my body and life so out of whack right now because of this disease that I wonder if I can ever be balanced again. From my walk to my checkbook I don’t know that anything will ever balance out again. But I have faith it will. So each part of me is slowly getting in to some form of balance, and I think that perhaps my mind may feel better today, but I won’t have the energy to back it up. Or in a few days I’ll suddenly be filled with a burst of energy, but I won’t be able to form a complete thought in my head, let alone put that energy to good use.
Right now that’s the most frustrating aspect of this awful disease that I’m facing. But it’s okay, because it means things are changing…I just have to learn to be patient and not bite the heads off of everyone I encounter in the process.
As always I take this as an opportunity to be grateful that I am making progress. Slow as it is, I’m glad to know that I am at least moving in a direction instead of sitting stagnant in a pool of my own misery. When I return to banging my head against the wall wondering what the hell happened to my life (at times I feel like I’m waking up in a nightmare, with little memory of anything that led up to this point) I have to take a deep breath and remember to be grateful.
If I couldn’t find things to be grateful for every day I wouldn’t be able to find a reason to go on to the next day. Life is so full of opportunities to be amazed at the things we have, but so often we are so trapped under our own invisible cloaks of misery that we can’t see it (sorry for the Harry Potter reference, I tend to watch the HP movies a lot when I don’t feel well). I’m lucky to be surrounded with wonderful friends and family who will slap me back to what I have to be thankful for, instead of what I have to complain about, when things get a bit rough.
**Please note I am only encouraging figurative “slaps of love”, please don’t go around slapping at will because “Eric said so”. You only make that mistake once.