Those are my two feet. I will stand on them.

I hope you all have had a great thanksgiving week! During this season we get time to spend with friends and family. It’s a shame that we have to wait for a holiday to be around our friends and family, but that just makes it all the more special.

I have had a better week this week which I am glad to report. I like to say something positive every so often, I hate feeling so negative all the time. I do not like negativity one bit. That’s something that I miss the most, being positive and looking forward. Hard days have only gotten harder. Fear has only dug deeper. Fear...fear has grown in me in more ways than I ever knew possible. I always have had faith that I will be okay one day, whether it be that I live a healthy life on earth or in heaven. Suffering isn’t forever and I have never doubted that. 

What I have learned is how many different types of mental suffering one could experience-all at once.  I have become so afraid of others judgement and opinions, I have become so paranoid of everything around every corner, paranoid that my friends are just being sympathetic towards my cause and they are just temporary, and most of all afraid that I will never get “me” back in one piece. I don’t like the idea of never exactly being myself again, I know that my body will be healthy again but I do fear that I will have “battle scars” I guess you could say. I used to feel like being sick had built me up in many ways. I have lost this feeling, I am sad to say. I feel like the events of this year have turned me bitter and pathetic. 

I don’t know where all of these thoughts came from. I don’t know when they started. I know I never purposely welcomed them in, but maybe I did by accident ? Sometimes I wish I did have a twin, someone right beside me every minute of the day who knew what I was supposed to be like and could see when something was turning south. I used to catch it, like oh no this ain’t right I need to be working on these thoughts and these emotions. Something broke in me and I lost that too. I lost my personal monitor for keeping up with what’s running through me. Seeing as I am a chronic insomniac I spend a significant amount of time awake at night thinking(I know that’s the worst time to think). Seeing as I sleep alone also means that all this thinking that leads to my fears and rampant emotions means no one is around to see that I am torturing myself by accident. My quiet time at night used to be spent reading and calming my mind. Oftentimes my reading would be other Lyme blogs, those are always so encouraging to read. Well, brain fog said no to reading for about the last eight months. So my quiet relaxing time has diminished and anxiety moved right on in and took its place. If anxiety had a face it’d be a smiling, greedy little devil. It just showed up one day and started stirring the trouble that it causes-also unwelcomed. 

This week I have tried to get back to calming my brain down a bit. Since I started skipping some of my meds every day my brain is starting to allow reading again. While this window of opportunity is open, I’m getting back to reading some old blogs that have traditionally been encouraging. So the one I’ve been flipping through is Ticks and Trust by Shannon Goertzen. Yesterday I sent this post to several friends of mine, who I share Lyme things with. It was recieved well, as you can imagine with fear and anxiety being an issue sharing personal things is something that I am wary about. The post just explains so well what I am feeling and what everyone with chronic Lyme probably feels. I can’t not share it, it’d be a disservice. Reading through Shannon’s blog has certainly helped me to gain some of my confidence back. It’s reminded me that I’m not just hurting and suffering, I’m fighting and digging in my heels. I may be out of sorts constantly, in pain, and foggy but I am fighting and I am winning. 

I am still here am I not?? I don’t have any reason to not be here anymore. This disease isn’t going to kill me, it doesn’t have my permsion to do that. I am not in that bad of shape, my brain isn’t itself whatsoever and my body is right behind it. I still work and I still go to school, I have never had to call in sick to work. Never. So I can’t be doing that bad. At least physically. 

I just have to keep digging in my heels and reminding myself of the things I have to be thankful for. When I first started going south earlier this year I quickly became thankful for what I had. This time of year, however, everyone is talking about what they are thankful for and that does my dusty mind some good at being grateful. It gives me excuses to tell people why I’m thankful and it also inspires me of what I have to be thankful for that I may not have noticed. Something else that comes with this season is time off from work and school that I can spend with my family and friends. So I have something new to be thankful for right now. My friends are my number 1 support system, they get me through the worst of days whether they even know it’s a bad day or not. Usually all that’s visible is how much I talk out loud, the worse I feel the quieter I am. Other than that it’s not always very visible that I’m floating south. 

I can say this also, since I started to rethink my school decisions for next year my depression has disappeared. Last week I decided maybe I should follow my best friend to school next year, him d I have talked about it and he seems to love the idea. Allowing myself to even think about going off to school and unleashing myself from the teather that Lyme has kept me on has been very freeing. I’d be with my best friend so I should be safe, he’s been with me sick before. Even so, by the time I would be leaving for school next year I should be out of this funk. Some of the stress that has been a contributing factor to the severity of my health decline is gone and will stay gone. So now I am in a recovery period of sorts. Stress isn’t what put me in decline, or at least as a whole. But it’s been a major contribution I believe. 

Naturally, thinking about following my friend and going off to school has sparked a couple dozen fears about the situation. #1 being that I am only going off to school because people will think I can’t let go of my friend. The school in question was actually my goal way back when I thought I would be  100% healthy when I entered college. So it would be like going back to an old dream, opening a box that I thought had long been closed and locked. Now the box has been opened and this time I have a best friend to go with it, I didn’t when this was my original plan. Actually I wouldn’t have ever met him most likely if I left for this school my first year of college. 

So I am trying to use these thoughts to encourage myself, if this is meant to be, that I am making a good choice. 

Like I said, since I started playing around with this my depression disappeared. Remnants still poke around, but I haven’t had any for real depression since. That was more than a week ago now. 

Fears of being judged are at an all time high but this too shall pass. I figured all I can do right now is apply to the school and wait. Either I’ll get in or a I won’t and that’ll be that.

I just keep on praying. I am praying for guidance and healing. I am praying for others that are suffering(Rebekah Miller and the Goertzen family among those), I am praying for my uninvited house guests-depression, anxiety, fear, and sadness to be banished without a trace
I have faith that all of these prayers will be answered, I don’t know how or when they will be answered. If I did I guess that would be a wish, not a prayer. I’m not much into the wishing business...now that’s something I don’t have faith in.

I am also praying that this week has inspired thankfulness to be in your heart this week. I have found many things to be thankful for that my issues have prevented me from seeing. Being around others of a like mind tends to make the old wheels turn and new thoughts appear!