Category Archives: Just me

Just me

Self care in the New Year…

Leave a comment

It’s the first day of a new year and I am faced with determining what feet I plan to step forward with as the year progresses.

To begin with I am going to continue to work to grow comfortable in my new skin, to feel okay about wanting to stay in instead of going out, to accept my limitations and celebrate my successes even if they feel small.

I am going to keep working on being okay talking about what is going on with me. I want to shrug off the stigma of disability, illness, and mental illness and embrace the fact that my life, while filled with amazing people and wonderful moments, is hard. I want to work to remember that it is okay to talk about the hard and I want to resist the urge to sweep it under the conversational carpet and pretend everything is fine.

I want to get better and believing that the people in my life understand and love me anyway. I keep being surprised by how accommodating and supportive people are. The narrative in my head about my limitations is so negative at times I think I transfer those feelings of resentment or impatience to others around me. It’s not fair to them or to me as most of the people in my life, if not all of them, actually really get that I am traveling a road that differs from theirs. They are happy to cross my road when they can and let me cross theirs when I can but they aren’t dismissing me because I am on a different path. They aren’t rolling their eyes behind my back and talking about how I must be faking it, they aren’t shutting me out of their lives because I can’t participate socially as much as they do. They are just allowing me to set the pace and join in when I can.

I believe my social anxiety will reduce dramatically once I allow myself to fully recognize these truths. Once I am able to fully appreciate my victories and limitations, once I am better able to talk about them, and once I am seeing people’s support instead of fearing their dismissal I think I will have a healthier outlook on life.

So those are my resolutions for self-care this year. It’s a tough set of things to accomplish but it’s going to be better for me than resolving to lose 10 pounds, especially as I’m eating snickerdoodles while I write this post.

despair, grief, health, Just me, Migraine

Measuring life in hours…

3 Comments

It’s been a while since I posted about chronic pain primarily because I still feel like a whiner even on my own blog, somehow. I’m blaming German stick-to-it-ed-ness and the fact that my grandparents lived through the depression as farmers in the Dust Bowl and probably ate pickled tumbleweeds without complaint. They were the boss.

I have a new medication. It gives me about three hours of low pain twice a day. This is good news. I now have six hours a day where I can be productive in a way I haven’t been in a while. There are some side effects. I can’t concentrate very well and I get super tired. I forget things and get flustered and double book and am generally not the best friend in the world to anyone. However, I get six hours where I can crochet, or read, or do chores, or play with the kids. Six hours when I can see movies or friends.

I am not sure when I began measuring my life in hours. I suspect it started after Michigan when I first got medication that gave me some relief. All I do know is I now think of my days in terms of how many low pain hours I can get. Do I schedule a movie? A party? Dinner with a friend?

I am blessed to have these hours. I have far more hours now than I used to. I am also sad I don’t have more hours and envious of those who do. You healthy people with your bodies who don’t prevent you from being anything you dream of. You people who can be at parties all night, see any movie you want, go to a rock concert or night club. Your vibrant lives flash before me and make my previous self cry out in recognition and despair.

I miss you! She says. I used to be like you! I want to be like you again! 

You don’t measure your life in hours. You may not even measure it at all. I know I didn’t used to. I had the luxury of a limitless existence with nothing but my own ingenuity to stop me. Now I struggle to carve out a happy existence in a world increasingly defined by limitations.

I envy the freedom of your limitless hours even while I am happy you have them.

 

 

family, Just me

The velcro child…

2 Comments

He used to play by himself quite well. If fact he would spend hours imagining entire worlds with his stuffies or even rotting his brain playing video games. He used to be self-reliant. Then he lost his favorite playmate.

She didn’t die or anything horrible like that, she simply grew up. The 5/12 year old who was there at his birth and grew to be his favorite person in the world became a freshman in high school and stopped wanting to play games with her now 8 year old brother. It’s a normal transition for her even if it is horrible for him.

He has never lived a life without a playmate – until now.

Which is why he now spends every waking moment of his time with me at my side demanding my complete and total attention to everything he does from changing the name of his character on the ROKU game we play to watching how much juice he has already drunk from his glass since the last time he asked me to look three seconds ago.

He is a velcro child, a snuggly burr, stuck to my side and refusing to let go without pain and discomfort.

He honestly feels he isn’t getting enough attention from me and his father because he used to get this huge additional attention from his sister who would now rather listen to music and read than pay much attention to anyone. Those rare moments when she calls him to her and asks him to join in an activity are like sunshine in England. He rushes to her side and soaks up the time and attention like a dry sponge dropped into a lake. The he dries back out in tearful spurts as she inevitably moves onto something he is welcome to participate in. He returns resignedly to me and I resignedly welcome him, setting aside my work/play/whatever to spend some time on only him.

I keep waiting for it to pass. I encourage solo play and even parallel play with me so I can get stuff done but all the self reliance in the world won’t replace what he’s missing. He is missing his sister’s childhood. His fellow adventurer and play pal. His best friend. His very favorite person in the whole wide world.

And she is never going to return.