Strength

It's an interesting phenomena that the more active you are the better you tend to feel. Because when you feel like crap and are hurting or feel sick or whatever, the LAST thing you're interested in is getting out of bed to do anything.

On Saturday the 23rd, I walked the dog around the block...and yes it was at 5:15 am. I then crawled back into my bed and studied as hard as I could (with the usual interruptions of Facebook, email, and text messages of course!) until 3 pm. Then I dragged my butt out of bed, picked out jeans, a tank top, and a multi-colored sweatshirt (which I LOVE and got from the site www.greatergood.com. I HIGHLY recommend shopping there because it benefits different charities that you choose). I then took a nice, long shower followed by doing my make-up and my hair.

Now, bare in mind that this is something I rarely do and am in the process of changing. I want to get back to living a life where I spend the day in clothes in lieu of pajamas. I want to continue to challenge myself with respect to my physical activity levels getting better, and in turn, my body reaping the benefits of getting stronger. I want to recapture the motivation to stick to a schedule where I walk the dog every day (actually, that's not much of a choice considering he starts pawing at my bed anywhere between 4:45 and 5:15 am EVERY DAY), where I am helpful around the house, where I am more self-sufficient in living my life through keeping my room organized and clean, doing my own laundry, and making meals (because I really do love cooking).

I am also on a slow-moving path that (I hope) will lead to my receipt of a spinal implant that stops pain impulses from certain parts of my body to my brain. My appointment with my neurologist this past Thursday, the 28th, was a waste of time, and I will admit that I was feeling hopeless when I left. Yet, I know I am on the right path. On Friday, May 6th I have an appointment with CMMC's pain management clinic, and I was assured that these people would be able to refer me to a neurosurgeon who could do the implant. And in the big scheme of things, what's one more week after waiting 6.5 years when you think about it?

My point through all of this rambling is this: what I am really trying to tap into is my inner strength. I need it to be successful in any and all of the things I mentioned I wanted to change in my life. I am setting goals that I can accomplish, albeit they feel small to someone who is a natural overachiever. Still, I am focusing mostly on my inner strength because without it none of these things will be possible. I feel as though if I compare my inner strength to the beginning of 2016 there is a distinct difference. Back then I couldn't even imagine how to blaze a trail that could lead to a new life...but I can now, and that, in turn, helps make me stronger. The effects of this rebuilding my inner strength are seemingly cyclical to me...the stronger I get allows me to gain even more inner strength. Another interesting phenomenon.

So I will continue my insanely early walks with the dog, pushing myself to go farther and farther as my body will allow. I will continue to go to the YMCA and take water aerobics to help my body overcome the atrophy I have experienced as a result of being more or less bedridden (due to pain and mental illness which was exacerbated because I just couldn't take the monotony of life with such pain anymore). And I will certainly continue the medical path I am pursuing. In short, I can see that I will get internally stronger than I have been able to imagine these last 6+ traumatic years.

And although I know I will have setbacks and whatnot, I also know that the more I cultivate my inner strength, the better I will handle them...and that's something I really want to achieve.

Mourning and Mental Illness

For me, my constant mourning is for my old life, meaning the life I had almost 7 years ago (pre-9/29/09 to be exact) where I was young and free and physically and mentally able to take on anything thrown at me. For the last 6+ years I have been recovering from a near fatal car accident on that day. I broke my back which has led to many physical problems including learning to walk again, using the bathroom again, etc., and I received a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) which caused me to have to learn to read again, talk with limited vocabulary, and more. It's been a long time since I was "me" because of all the physical therapy, doctor appointments, constant battles with depression and anxiety, and my seemingly never-ending battle with nerve pain, among other things. I could go on, but you get it.

The point is that I am definitely mourning how my life used to be. Sure, it wasn't perfect, and I absolutely have a past that I am not so eager to remember...who doesn't? However, I was proud of who I was back then. I had achieved tremendous success professionally among many other things. I was close to all my friends and family and knew I was loved. In no way did I feel lost.

Yet here I am in April 2016, and I am so far away from the person I was I have a really hard time remembering what it was like to live that way. For example, I was into fashion and shoes. I looooved me some high heels. Yet when I got hurt, the possibility of ever wearing those types of shoes again was nil. And although I dream about wearing them almost every night, in my new life I shall never wear another pair of stilettos or anything with any sort of heel. Instead I now have a life that includes nothing but flats, and to be honest, I hate it...even though I will admit that I do have a cute collection of them.

I will say that my mourning has more than drained me mentally. I have been in and out of psych wards for a while, and I can't really remember anything for the last 2 years I was so mentally sick. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, and anxiety. And even though I shouldn't be embarrassed by this fact, I most certainly am. Logically speaking, I know that there are some 70%+ people in the United States who have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, so why do I feel that there is still such a stigma? I don't know, but it is certainly something I don't talk about to most anyone, including my friends.

My everyday reality is that I fight two major battles simultaneously: physical pain and mental illness. The last time I was (psychiatrically) hospitalized (Feb 2016) I promised my family and my doctor that I would dedicate myself to exploring and finding a solution to my life-sucking pain. Pain that is so bad at times that all I can do is scream whilst I lay in my bed from exhaustion. In fact, for years I have spent most of my days bedridden because I deal with this pain all the time. It's done awful things to me mentally, particularly with depression. I have tried to kill myself 7 times in the last year and a half (all overdoses) alone. And sometimes I am just so lost in my head that I can't express myself because there's too much to say and no words that can accurately capture it, so I just place a pillow over my head and hide. Yesterday was one of those days, actually.

It's not always like that though (the need to hide, I mean). Even though I still deal with constant pain all day every day, I have started to work on a vision for my future...something I wasn't sure I would ever be able to achieve. For example, I have re-enrolled in University of Phoenix so that I can finish the degree I started before this accident turned my world upside down. My first class back I got a 99 out of 100, so I am pretty proud of myself for that. I am hopeful that I can keep up the good work. It's not easy between the pain and days like yesterday, but I have somehow found the urge to continue on once again...a remnant of my old life and the old me that I am hoping will stick around.

Even though I have bad days, I am really trying hard to overcome my issues so that I can have a new life that I am happy with. I go to my neurologist on the 28th of April to start a discussion about an implant for my spine that apparently blocks the pain signals from my lower extremities (I'm crossing my fingers for that to go well). Right now I can't remember what it was like to not have pain that debilitates me, and when I do it seems like a dream.

I have started walking my dog myself (as opposed to my mom having to help me) at 5:15 am EVERY day (because he is ready to go whether I am still asleep or not), and I am trying to go further and further in my neighborhood each time we go. I hope to be able to make it around the block next week. Plus I joined the YMCA so that I could go to low impact water aerobics up to 5 times a week. I've only been once to the class so far, but it was great, and I felt great (albeit tired) afterward. I have a baby-step goal to attend at least twice a week and build up slowly to Monday through Friday.

In the end, I hope I can use this site to express how I feel, whether it be good or bad or just so-so. And I hope that some of you who relate to this will comment so that I can get and give support to others who have issues they deal with...especially those of you who are transitioning from an "old" life to a "new" one like I am, or perhaps have issues similar to mine. I look forward to sharing my journey with you.

One last thing...Women's Health magazine coming out for May has a segment about mental illness. Those of you who suffer from mental health issues (men or women) should check it out.