Just me -Unadulterated?

I couldn’t publish what I had originally written this week. It needs air and to be free to breathe a little before I send it out into the ether. Then, I was  uncertain what to write – which is crazy given everything I want to say. So instead, speaking whatever came into my head seemed like the next best thing to do. The clip below is me this morning not too long after I woke up. I wouldn’t say that it’s me at my best. However, it is me at my most unfiltered. Whatever it is, whatever I am in it and however I seem, it depicts a version of me coping with the sort of physical and emotional experiences that greet me some mornings, blessed as I am with a number of chronic and/or degenerative illnesses.

In a word, I didn’t ‘arf feel like s**t – not just physically but emotionally. By giving in and just allowing myself to feel the emotions, letting it all breathe (literally) for a while, I felt a lot better and after a short while, I found more strength to get on with the day. In bygone days, I would have smothered feelings like this and pushed them all back in by powering on and diving straight into “busyness” – but as I am physically incapable of that these days, I have no choice but to try it a different way now.

I woke up feeling like I’d been drugged, been out on the tiles all night and then fallen face down on those very same tiles, smacking my head in the process. As my days of being out on any kind of flooring are now just distant memories, the only simulacrum of past days is that I had taken a fair old whack of prescribed codeine yesterday for the severe pain in my backside caused by my very own stigmata. The story of my Action Man butt is from the most recent chapter of an entire saga I could call, “The Abominable Abdominals” and is luckily for another day. Suffice to say that this wound is the solitary opening in that entire region of my body, and caused by the major surgery I had in October 2017. It is smack bang on my coccyx causing more than a modicum of discomfort and what’s more, its constant oozing needs daily care and sterile wound dressings. In this way, I am like a little walking, talking volcano with not much walking, but a lotta talking: venting hot air and fiery liquid from the little geyser on my behind… (oh, please … get a grip!)

I woke up feeling very low. But despite rambling aimlessly and sounding as if I have lost most of my teeth, by the time I had finished “talking to you” – that is, after I felt I had made some kind of connection, albeit a very one-sided one – I did feel much better.

I have felt pretty low this entire week and partly this is because it suddenly hit me how much I have aged internally during the last 5 years of chronic pelvic inflammation and sepsis which has devoured all my body’s resources, robbing my bones and my lungs of much needed nutrients and sustenance. Consequently, there are many people in their 70s and 80s who have better bones and lungs than me. I have even SHRUNK and lost 1cm in height – seriously. I mean, HELLO?? Talk about careless. I can’t even smell the roses in my own damn garden. These days, I am an even more sure fire certainty in an audition for Disney’s It’s A Small World!

What I mean to say is: no matter how low you may feel at the beginning of the day, it doesn’t mean that you will feel like that all day – just taking it minute by minute without judging can make it seem better – and often it actually then does get better.

I am now writing this from a gorgeous place on the shore of Bewl Water with a wonderful view out to the reservoir, breathing in fresh country air and watching owls fly by in the fading twilight. And I feel great. I feel frightened and have pain just like I did this morning but I made it here and it’s ok.

I also wish to tell anyone out there reading this, especially my fellow warriors who are suffering and are in physical or emotional pain and perhaps are trying to ignore it or push it back down, that sometimes it is best to let it go and let it be just as it is. The energy it takes to hold something back takes a greater toll than just letting a little of it out. On some days, showing great strength is to say to whatever foe it is that is hurting you, “you’re too much for me just now. I will try again tomorrow ….”

And tomorrow, you may find your foe is not quite the ogre it seemed and who knows, it may even have disappeared into the night …. And if not, you will be fortified to go once more into battle.

 

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.” Mary-Anne Radmacher

Good night, fellow warriors all.