Perspective is Everything

“I’m thankful for my struggle, because without it, I would not have stumbled across my strength.”

On weeks like this I tend to repeat this mantra in my head throughout the day. This has been a consistently rough month- I’ve felt sluggish for weeks, work has been very hectic, and there are a lot of things I want to do (spend time with friends, paint, have fun) that my body just has not allowed me the privilege of doing.

I guess I could start more from the beginning though?  I have CFS, or that is what the doctors have finally shrugged their shoulders in frustration and told me.  About a year ago, it started out as a terrible case of mono.  Let me tell you folks- while it is an illness that most tend to crack jokes about (things such as “ooo who have you been kissing?!”), it really is a terrible thing to get.  My lymph nodes swelled to the size of grapes and hurt like hell.  I constantly had migraines and ran fever.  I couldn’t keep anything down, and on the rare day that I COULD, my stomach ached to the point that I wished I could just get it all out.  I could barely walk from my bedroom to the couch and I was on bed-rest for a month.  I slept for about 15-20 hours a day and my body ached constantly.   I was forced to allow others to do everything for me, I couldn’t even be left alone to shower for fear that I might pass out. 

So basically it was hell.  After a month I was able to go back to work part time for a while then finally full-time.  As the weeks went on, I would get spurts of energy and start to feel like myself again only to crash and be put back on bed-rest.  I would get a migraine that would turn into fever that would turn into severe fatigue and then I would have to sleep for hours or sometimes days.  I was finally cleared of mono however the symptoms never really left.  Fatigue, stomach issues, migraines… any time I pushed too much or got a bit stressed I’d end up in bed for days.  The doctors said give it time but after a year of this, they’ve finally concluded that it turned into CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) which apparently is not uncommon in adults who suffer from mono. 

So here I am, almost a year to the day and boy have I learned A LOT.  Never one to slow down for very long, being forced to sit or rest of hours or days or weeks at a time has really forced me to put things into perspective.  While I have wonderful friends and family I have always been kind of a loner when it comes to taking care of things.  I would do anything for my friends and I know they would do the same for me, I’ve just always preferred not to burden people.   Preferred clearly being past tense because I have really had to learn how to ask for help, or in some cases accept it when someone sees a need and tries to fill it.  It has been a very humbling experience realizing that I cannot do everything on my own and I will fully admit that there has been more than one occasion when I bawled on the couch as someone took out my trash or ran to the grocery store for me. 

It would be so easy for me to sit here and throw a pity party.  Sometimes I want to on the really rough days, or on weeks where I have had to bail on plans with friends for the third or fourth time.  If I am being honest sometimes I DO sulk, but never for very long.  I think the best perspective to have about all of this is to choose joy.  I can’t claim this phrase as my own, my dear friend Bobbi started saying this a few years ago, but it wasn’t until all of this that I really understood what it meant.  It is so easy in good times to have joy but to really possess a joyful SOUL, some days you have to choose joy. 

I think that is the biggest lesson I have taken from all of this.  Life is rough, whether you have CFS, or you’ve dealt with a bad break up, or you lost a parent, or dealt with family issues (my life in a nut shell) but it isn’t what you are going through that defines you but how you deal with it.  I won’t claim to have truly been graceful through all of my trials, but I have come out stronger on the other end.  I have chosen not to be bitter.  I have allowed life to mold me and learn from the bad days.  I think that is what matters the most.

So I am having a rough month.  I’ve cried through some of this post because I don’t know long it will last.  It could be 6 months or it could be much longer than that.  Having joy when you are unsure of what is to come is scary but choosing joy allows you to have some peace through the unknown.  So life lesson #1 is a pretty big one but I am grateful for my trials and a chance to grow into a stronger woman, a more compassionate woman, and hopefully the kind of woman who contributes love and something wonderful to this world.