A while ago I posted about the benefits of giving up.  Since then I have been dealing with my pain mostly on my own. I have a muscle relaxant to take the edge off my fibro-stiff muscles and an anti-depressant to take the edge off living with daily pain. For emergencies I have vicodin, but I can only take one a week max.

So far I am happy to report things are pretty good. I still hurt every day. I still get stiff and sore and feel my joints like no 41 year old should. I still have a headache that will never, ever, end. However, I have my life back. I no longer spend three to four days a week making my family drive me to different specialists and physical therapists. I no longer have the added pain of recovering from procedures that don’t really seem to work. I am no longer dealing with huge amounts of medication side effects as my doctors cycle through them trying to trick my broken nervous system into thinking it’s better.

Instead I have time to blog again. I work in the garden. I paint. I paint a lot. I read and play games and hang out with my kids and take my dog for long walks. I cook dinner and can sometimes clean the house. I kind of have a normal life again.

I’m still falling down on spoon management from time to time. Today I just had to paint a new Empathy Fish and while I felt good during the painting process I can already feel the stress my decision caused my body. I got ambitious and tomorrow I will pay. However, so long as I am patient with myself I can manage this illness with exercise, mindfulness, a couple of helpful meds, and art.

Art has become my solace, my healer, my place of peace. Somehow in the last month I have turned on whatever neuron housed my painting ability and I am loving every minute I hold a brush. My headache recedes into the background as I mix color and create shapes and play with light. Somehow I can paint, nearly every day, even though everything else takes careful moderation. Maybe I have finally found something that takes fewer spoons than everything else.

So I have said goodbye to my life as a busy lawyer and advocate with a million charity events and causes to attend and am embracing my life as an artist. I will create, if nothing else, a place of less pain for myself and with any luck a few pieces of beauty that bring joy to a small section of the world.

Today I write this to remind myself during the hard days that I have days where I feel like this. Where I feel hopeful and strong and capable. Days when I don’t feel like less than my old self. Days when I even feel like more than I used to be.