I keep a journal, but even that plateaued into a desert of dry tab-keeping and list-making. I said to myself, 'I can't write. It takes work to be good and I don't have that in me.' What a lazy human I can be about the things that truly matter and define me. I have written constantly ever since my mother placed a pencil in my tiny hand and put the blank lined page in front of me. I loved to watch that paper fill up with my own stories and sketches of people, houses, trees, clouds.
It's the one place I've always felt I could excel in if I put the work and practice into. Yet here I am at 38 and still hovering around the insecure notion that I would never amount to anything. What a waste. I am determined to give more effort into the things I love. This is a morbid thought, but what would I want my obituary to say? I know that I am a good mother and I try to be a decent wife. I keep my home relatively tidy and I don't fail to water my garden and pluck out its weeds. I love my friends deeply and desperately yet I am very lacking in pursuing friendships and calling or writing. I want to be better at this too... but I've honestly just been so gosh darned exhausted lately.
I'm not one to embrace complaining because I don't think anything good ever comes from it, including the pity people might give you which some feel supported by, but perhaps that is just another form of pride that I have in my heart. I want to be transparent, but I'm torn between transparency and the feeling that I might overshare in order to be pitied so I avoid sharing at all. This seems like a safe place to share some things, because people get to choose whether or not they want to take the time to click into my blog and read my thoughts. Truth is lately I've been having some major issues. I have not been able to fall asleep naturally without sleep aids since June. This is due in part to sciatic pain which affects me every day in varying degrees. It is in my hips, and the tingling, burning, constant tightness and discomfort runs down my legs and gives me restless leg syndrome at night, like little electric shocks throughout me. I feel like my whole body is pulsating when I try to sleep, so I cannot. So I pop a pill (well, a half usually) to synthetically fall into rest. I've been dealing with fatigue, and this shuts me down and makes me not want to hang out with anybody for some reason. It's very frustrating.
I see myself as a healthy person: mostly vegetarian and good at taking my supplements and doing some form of light exercise or yoga most days. So this is incredibly irritating to have chronic pain and issues. Nighttime has always been my time to listen. To reflect and meditate and hear what God is saying, what my mind is saying, to assess my state of heart and to adjust accordingly. I haven't been as free to do this lately because of the pain. But I am certainly pressing in consistently, I am not succumbing to discontentment or stagnancy. I have hope and know that things will not always be this way. I will sleep again, I will feel pain-free again, I will be energized once more.
I have to believe that.
I think of all the people over time who have endured any sort of prolonged suffering or pain, and shone brightly in the midst of it, and I am inspired to dig deeper into that. I know I have renewed compassion for people with disorders and disabilities and diseases that aren't visually noticeable now, where before I may have been annoyed with people's complaints of pain or treatments or constant asking for prayer. I wish I could reach out a little more for that but I find it pandering in myself. I'd rather just keep to myself and hope that eventually I'll find the solution through alternative routes like massage, or acupressure or acupuncture, SOMEthing.
This is very hard for me to write, honestly. Not so hard to write, but to actually go through with sharing it and having people know my vulnerability and issues currently. So scary. But scary can be good. I don't think everyone will understand, especially if they've never had chronic pain. It's so weird! Anyone who has had it or is having these types of issues right now, they know it can be a lonely road. Finding the right doctors to help, the right treatment, if any, the ability to communicate what you're feeling and get over the irritating thought of, "But I just want to be BETTER, so maybe if I don't talk about it it doesn't exist." People, I get it. Basically I have neck pain, headaches, fatigue, joint and sciatic pain every day lately. It's crazy. It wasn't there, and then it was suddenly there. Taking over my body, and not going away.
But it will. I am hopeful.
This post looks so pathetic to me. I want to delete it. I want to hide this and pretend like everything is peachy with me, because the optimistic, sunshiny words look so much better on a page than these kinds. But I'm going to just put this out there into the cyber world. Maybe it will help someone to know they're not alone. Maybe it'll bring light to why I may have been keeping to myself lately. Who knows.
I guess I'll leave it right there. I'm sorry if anyone clicked on this post hoping for my usual uplifting words of encouragement and had to read this sad junk, haha.
I love you people. I'm thankful for you. If you need prayers or a friend, I'll try to be there for you.
