I don’t know why but that title reminds me of being a child and the fear I’d have when Peter Pan was on TV once a year and I’d hear the tick tock of the watch eaten by the crocodile. (I have to admit, my brain is much worse than it used to be, my dyslexia is at an all time bad, and I’m not sure I have all the facts of Peter Pan right, but I don’t have the time to watch it now, so bare with me as I muddle my way through an attempt at an update.
It’s been over 4 months since my last post. In fact I think my last post was when I hit my 2 1/2 year “sick” mark. (Sick for many, many years before that, but the day I woke up completely disabled and never recovered is my “sick day”.) The 3 year “sickerversary” is coming up, the day after my 39th birthday. Hard to believe when I was 35 I was so sick and told my friend my body just wasn’t right, something was wrong. And now I’m getting ready to turn 39 and am still sick, living in a bed in my mother’s family room, fighting every day to have the physical and mental strength just to get out of bed and do what I have to do just to maintain being sick. Not even considering what needs to be done to heal, to find happiness in a life filled with pain and misery, to find a “home” in someone else’s home, and accept this as my life and my future.
I’ve more or less wiped out a good portion of my friends and family financially. The out of pocket costs so far are in the 6 digits, and I don’t know that I can even safely say I’m “halfway there”. Truth is I don’t think there is ever an ending point, so you can never truly have a halfway point.
That’s what sucks about being sick with Lyme. And I mean really sick. Not the lucky people who see a tick, get it taken care of and properly treated immediately and then are fine. I mean the other majority of us that went for years and years without diagnosis, only to end up so physically disabled by the disease that by the time we found out about it, it was too late.
It sucks. We know that. But what are you going to do with “it sucks”? I stopped going on the FB “news feed” because I was so sick of seeing so many depressing posts. I made a goal to keep my FB page nothing but positive and honest (sometimes honesty isn’t positive, so then I infuse it with humor to take away the bite). But so many people who just don’t accept that life has handed them. (If you’re expecting some kind of “if life hands you Lyme make margaritas” saying here you will be disappointed. Actually, I guess you won’t because I ended up using one anyway.)
I reached a point where I realized this disease took away my life. The life I had. It didn’t take away my ability to live. So yes, I have been “gone” a lot over the last year or longer, and there are many reasons for that. I hope to share some of them with you, as well as my journey to get me back to the point to be able to sit and write again.
Am I going to write I’m filled with hope and happiness and gratitude for an illness that has taken away the life I loved and left me with a life I have to learn to accept, let alone try and like? No. Because I’m not. I’m mad as hell about that, even 3 years later. And maybe will be for the rest of my life. But that anger is fuel, and I need to use it to fuel the right fires. And over the last 2 years, which have been pure hell for me (I never expected how far down bottom could be until I hit rock bottom….and then hit it again….and then once again….and you guessed it, once again), I’ve had to learn to direct the fuel of my anger into the proper channels. And slowly I’m finding a way to accept what life has handed me, be thankful for it, and turn it into something beautiful.
So what are you going to do with “it sucks” in your situation? What can you do to make “it sucks” be okay? Please share you ideas in the comments section to share with others your ideas. And over the next few months, along with some amazing projects and articles that are being worked on, as well as a general overhaul of the website, I will share with you some of my secrets. (Nothing that will keep me from being elected to office in the future, but I think you all have enough on me already to keep that from happening.)
Life is a gift. But that is it. It’s like an empty box. The contents of our life are not just handed to us, we have to create them with what we are given. So help others know how you “create” out of “it sucks”.