WannaBeNormal - My Search for Peace, Love & Empathy

Ok, everyone who knows me knows its been a VERY stressful week for me. Between the kids, Mom, work, and my extra curricular activities, I feel like Stretch Armstrong, being pulled in every different direction. (That was a real character right? Do you all know who I am talkin about? Lol) I don’t know that I could have done anything differently but I need to find a way to cut down on the stress in my life.

People with Fibromyalgia handle stress differently. Its not just a thing we can sit down for a few minutes and think calm thoughts and it will dissipate. Stress gets into our bodies, it gets into our already foggy brains, and it makes us flustered, confused and frustrated. So our normal achey bodies and foggy brains get even more achier, and um, foggier lol. We cant think, we hurt worse than our normal hurt, and we have all these thoughts we don’t know what to do with. We cant figure out what the next step we want to do is. We know things need to be done, but we don’t know what, and even if we know what needs to be done, we don’t know how to do it. I for one cant handle it so I do what most people would consider to be the chickens way out, I use the avoidance technique. I just ignore the problems, tell myself everything is fine, and move on. But inside I know its not, inside I know I need to be a grown up and face it, so I get cranky.

Unfortunately this week has been no different. Starting with some left over stress from last week, I ignored it, positive I could get past it, positive I could forget (well not forget, get past though) as easily as I forgave. In my defense, I might have been able to if it hadn’t been one thing after another this week. Then again, when isn’t it one thing after another? I realized this week that I don’t handle stress as well as I did before the Fibro hit. Now I rely on my relaxation techniques, meditation, quiet time and pills. I hate that. It used to be a minute or two alone I was ready to take on the world, and its probably one of the things that piss me off the most about Fibro. Now no matter what I do its constant stress, any little thing adds to it until I feel like the weight of the universe is on my shoulders. Besides annoying me, it affects me physically now, I often feel drained, my head aches, my shoulders are tight, my stomach is doing constant back flips (and front flips and side flips) and I am cranky (a fact that I admit grudgingly).

I just wonder sometimes why, you know? I think that there is a reason for everything, but some things I cant figure out. I try and look at the positive of everything. Fibromyalgia has changed the way I look at life. No longer do I think I am invincible, no longer do I think that I will be young for ever. It has taught me the value of the time I have, and not to waste it on regret or something as equally useless, anger and hatred. Most people don’t learn the true value of the time they have until its too late, so I am thankful I have learned the lesson early enough to spend the extra time with the kids, to stay for one more push on the swing, to squeeze them that extra second.

It has taught me to prioritize. To realize what things can wait and what cant. Sometimes we think oh I’ll do that tomorrow. Well while we still have tomorrow, we don’t always know how we are going to feel, so when we have the energy, we gotta use it the best we can to maximize what we can accomplish.

It has taught me compassion. I think, or I would like to think, that I have always had it, but it heightened the level in which I have felt it. Mom always said I wore my heart on my sleeve, because I felt for others so much sometimes. Now I think I go beyond compassion, because I have felt pain others don’t understand. That does things to you that you wouldn’t understand unless you yourself have felt the daily pain and frustrations that come from having a chronic illness.

It has taught me respect for others who battle this illness, and so many others that are as bad or worse and over come obstacles and odds that life always tends to put in our way. Really respect in general as I realize that we all have our crosses to bear in life. Respecting others leads to respecting yourself.

It has taught me my limits. We all have them, we all push them, but it has taught me to be truthful with myself about my own. Also to be realistic with myself and my expectations of myself and others.

I guess the final thing I have learned (I say that cuz when I am done with this, I will remember a whole bunch more things lol) is I have learned who my true friends are. My true friends are the ones who I still call my friends. They are here for me good days and bad, they don’t believe the stories they are sometimes told and they stand up for me, best of all they don’t tell stories behind my back. My friends are the ones by my side regardless, and they know who they are, and they know I am there for them always as well.

Its not always fun lessons to learn, but every lesson is important, every day a blessing. So everyday that I sit here and wonder why, I remember how much I have learned, and think that despite the bad, I am a better person for having experienced what I have in my life, Fibro included. We are all here for a reason, I don’t know what mine is yet, but every time I get stressed I sit down and I think, and after the frustration has passed, I realize that I take the bad with the good and I cope and I live and I will keep going, keep pushing, because lets face it, it beats the alternative. When I take the good and forget about the bad, the stress goes down, I chill out, and I remember my kids my friends and my goals and dreams, and I remember what I am doing, and I pick myself up, dust myself off, quit pouting and get myself back on track. That’s all we can do right? Thanks for listening to me ramble while I work myself through it….. All better now