Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Cranky Fibro Girl And The Story That Is Completely Inappropriate For Easter

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So first of all, I would just like to go on record as saying that I know that this is not at all the kind of story I should be telling  on Easter. But what can I say? I am just the messenger. I can’t help when these stories come to me and ask to be told.

Also, I pretty much figured that I screwed the Easter pooch way back on Easter of 1990 when my then-boyfriend (and current husband) and I went with his cousins to watch “Pretty Woman” on Easter night, a movie which, as you may recall, features a prostitute as one of its main characters. And I’ve pretty much just gone downhill from there.

So, as I was saying. If you have ever spent more than 35 seconds around me in real life, you are most likely extremely familiar with my ongoing lament which asks, WHY CAN’T ANYONE ELSE BUT ME NAME AND DEFINE THE EIGHT PARTS OF SPEECH?! HELLO, STATEWIDE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FAIL! (I know. I am a blast at parties.)

However luckily for everyone involved, I am generally able to forget all about this now that I pretty much spend all my time managing this whole chronic illness situation.

But not today.

Unsuspectingly enough, my husband and I decided to get out of the house and spend some time together this afternoon, and so we went over to our recently gentrified little downtown with its porch swings and water-shooty-fountain-thing. (Because half-naked toddlers lurching around like drunken sailors=AWESOME!)

So we sat down together on a swing and started swaying and snuggling, and then my gaze drifted over to the wooden support post holding up our swing. And of course there was graffiti. And of course there was swearing in the graffiti. And of course there was the use of the “f-word” in the swearing in the graffiti. Except…IT WAS MISSPELLED.

And there began the ride of the first horseman of the Apocalypse.

Hitting Me Right Between The Eyes

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So I am reading this new (for me) book called, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight In Our Busy Lives, by Wayne Muller, and when I got to this passage my whole body started vibrating in recognition of the truth of what he was saying:

While recovering from a life-threatening illness, he writes, he realized that,

“I had always assumed that people I loved gave energy to me, and people I disliked took it away from me. Now I see that every act, no matter how pleasant or nourishing, requires effort, consumes oxygen. Every gesture, every thought, or every touch uses some life.”

Yes! This is what I have never been able to articulate to people who try and encourage me to “get out of the house and go do something.”

Say, for example, I wanted to go to the yarn store. Well, it’s not just “going to the yarn store.” It’s getting up, taking off my pajamas, showering, getting dressed, organizing things like purse and keys, opening the garage door, getting into the car, getting settled in the car, driving to the yarn store, parking, walking to the front door, stepping inside, being present with whoever is currently there, detaching from the people there, walking back to the car, driving home, taking off my clothes, and then putting my pajamas back on. And that doesn’t even include all the energy needed to look through patterns, decide on a project, find yarn for the project, and make my purchase.

“This is a useful discovery for how our days go. We meet dozens of people, have so many conversations. We do not feel how much energy we spend on each activity, because we imagine we will always have more energy at our disposal. This one little conversation, this one extra phone call, this one quick meeting, what can it cost? But it does cost, it drains yet another drop of our life. then, at the end of days, weeks, months, years, we collapse, we burn out, and cannot see where it happened. It happened in a thousand unconscious events, tasks, and responsibilities that seemed easy and harmless on the surface but that each, one after the other, used a small portion of our precious life.

…If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath-our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us. In my relationships with people suffering with cancer, AIDS, and other life-threatening illness, I am always struck my the mixture of sadness and relief they experience when illness interrupts their overly busy lives. While each shares their particular fears and sorrows, almost every one confesses some secret gratefulness. ‘Finally,’ they say, ‘at last. I can rest.’ “

Amen.

A Word Problem, For Your Tuesday Afternoon Enjoyment

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Question: If you have two humans with four post-secondary degrees between them, and one cat with a hyper-active thyroid-a cat who only a year ago was told by the vet that she needed to lose weight and so was put on diet cat food, and then lost weight, and then lost WAY too much weight, and then needed to gain some weight back-how long should it take for at least one of the humans to realize that they should stop continuing to feed the poor animal with diet cat food?

Answer: W-A-Y sooner than it takes for this to be embarrassing enough to mock us for on this blog.

Me, Cranky Fibro Girl, And This Blog, Round 3: Wherein I Decide To Do Things Differently, And So The Monsters Will Just Have To Suck It

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And so now we come to the million dollar question: What if I let this blog just be about me and my stories, with no rules about how the offering of my writing has to be? What if I release myself from the shackles of demanding that I be The Entertainer 24/7?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I would be more clearly stating, “this is who I am, and this is who I am not. This is what I do, and this is what I don’t do.” And I would be admitting that I am no longer trying to be all things to all people. (Not that that really worked anyway, as shown by the many empty, arid time periods of Not Writing that I’ve gone through over the past few years.)

And it means that I have to be willing for people to longer like my blog. I have to be willing to disappoint people. I have to be willing to admit that I’m narrowing the focus of what I do, and that, while my blog will most likely be enjoyed by a lot of people (or, my Right People, as Havi Brooks calls them), it will not be right for lots of other people.

And while part of me feels that I will be limiting myself and losing something, another part of me is actually excited, because I suspect that this decision will actually be really freeing and expansive for me.

Of course, the monsters love to yell at me about how if I do this, then I will lose every single one of my readers, and that I will just be hurling my words out into empty space.

But the reality is that as I’ve started to just write whatever comes up, however it comes up, and to more clearly define myself as Cranky Fibro Girl and say, “Yes, I am writing a blog about having fibromyalgia, and there will be lots of posts about what it’s like to live everyday with this illness, and lots of posts about doctors and symptoms and health care, and there will still be funny stories, but they will all be written from the perspective of someone living with a chronic illness , I’ve actually gotten more readers and more comments than I ever did before. Because now I have a clear Voice, and a clear Message, and a clear Audience.

So ha ha! Take that, monsters!

Also: I don’t really know why I have this monster who says that people without fibro or a chronic illness would not be interested in my story. I follow a lot of blogs whose writers have completely different lives than I do. But I read them because I like to hear people’s stories. So why wouldn’t that be true for me and my blog?

And another thing: I’ve read and heard Havi speak a lot about the fact that people come to read/join/buy your Thing because it is an expression of your You-ness, not necessarily because of the particular form your Thing takes. I’m pretty sure I heard her say, as an example of this idea, that if she suddenly changed her blog from helping people have a conscious relationship with themselves to a blog about her new career as a pole-dancer, people would still come to hear what she had to say because they would be coming to experience the Havi-ness of what she was doing.

(Although it’s entirely possible that I imagined that whole thing-I have been on a lot of painkillers lately.)

So perhaps the same is true for me. Perhaps people come to read what I have to say because they like experiencing the Jenny-ness in whatever I’m writing about.

I read this passage the other day on Gluten-Free Girl’s website:

Some people ask why I don’t write in every piece here about gluten-free.

I am alive. That life involves being gluten-free, but there are so many more parts to it:

funny stories, exhilarating travel, tender moments with my husband, discoveries in mouthfuls, falling down and laughing at myself, and learning how to live in the moment, every moment I am alive.

When we were in Italy for our honeymoon, we were both astonished to discover how easy it was for me to eat gluten-free. All I had to say was “Io sono celiaco.” Waiters and chefs understood. They pointed out the dishes I could eat, and then brought me plates of black-truffle risotto, or sizzling beefsteak, or a saucer of perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes so vividly colored that I had to blink twice before looking at them. And that was it. No explanations or apologies. I simply ate gluten-free and went onto other conversations around the table.

The sweet life. Italians call it la dolce vita. And in order to remain well there, sometimes I simply said senza glutine (without gluten).

That’s what I’d like to bring here. La dolce vita, senza glutine. I want to show you a vibrant life, filled with hilarious adventures and quiet contemplation. Stories of saying yes to life.

All of it, gluten-free.

And my whole being said, “Yes! This is what I want to do, too!”

“a vibrant life, filled with hilarious adventures and quiet contemplation. Stories of saying yes to life.” All brought to you from the magical perspective of me and my “Jenny-ness.”

So come aboard, and join me for the stories of my sweet, sweet life.

Me, Cranky Fibro Girl, And The Monsters: The Threesome Edition

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Continuing on from yesterday’s post, the second way I’ve been torturing myself over this blog is due to my increasingly rigid and inflexible stories about the definition of humor, being a “funny” writer, what I believe I’m allowed to write about here, how I believe my stories have to look, feel, and sound, and various things of that nature.

When I started this blog almost 5 years ago the tagline was, “Entertaining Stories From Everyday Life”. And it was so much fun to write because I finally had a space to tell stories that showcase my kind of kooky way of looking at the world. And it was so easy to write back then, because I was focusing on lots of other things like tutoring and coaching and knitting and making-our-home, and so writing a funny story here and there was like sprinkles on the icing on the cake.

But then I got sick. And my life started to shrink down, smaller and smaller. I stopped being able to work. I stopped being able to attend any kind of holiday or social event. I stopped being able to keep up with the house. The various medications I’ve taken over the past couple of years have occasionally interfered with my vision, and so I’ve had to stop knitting for now. And then of course, given all of those “I can’t anymore”s, on top of the constantly feeling like shit, I stopped feeling funny.

And then this blog became My Only Thing, which of course then began to drop herds-of-elephants sized pressure onto something that was not designed to be My Only Thing, but rather a fun, accompanying extra-bonus-ey Thing to go along with all of My Other Things.

Plus, (and let me just say right here that being stuck home alone all day with just my pain and my thoughts for company DID NOT help me out with this AT ALL), I got more and more stressed out because I could no longer  “deliver” a straight-on humor blog, which to me meant a blog composed entirely of self-contained, carefully crafted funny stories that always ended with a short, zingy punchline.

And so that is where all the trouble started.

[Read more…] about Me, Cranky Fibro Girl, And The Monsters: The Threesome Edition

Cranky Fibro Girl And The Epic Battle Of Wills

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Back in 2004 the band “Bowling For Soup” release a song called “1985”, about a woman who one day suddenly woke up and realized that she was a grownup, not a teenager anymore, and that her high school glory days were way behind her.

“She was gonna be an actress
She was gonna be a star
She was gonna shake her ass
On the hood of white snake’s car
Her yellow SUV is now the enemy
Looks at her average life
And nothing has been alright since

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she’s uncool
Cause she’s still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985”

Well, I finally FINALLY admitted to myself recently that I have the same problem as Debbie, the girl from the song. My body may be here in 2010, but my mind is still stuck back in 2006, trying to recreate things the way they were back then.

August of 2006 was a great time for me. I’d had the very first version of my humor blog for a little over a year, and it was a rousing success. I think it was a huge surprise to everyone around me that not only did I write, but I was a really good writer, and not only was I a really good writer, I was a really good humor writer. So there was lots of newness and novelty and compliments and cheering, which was great.

And then I joined Toastmasters to start exploring the possibility of becoming not just a humor writer, but also a humorous speaker. And I won a ribbon the first night I attended as a guest. And then I won the “Best Speech” award when I gave my “Icebreaker” speech, and the people attending that night were kind of stunned, and said they’d never seen such a good “first speech” before. And then there were more compliments and admiration and awe and Raving Fans.

And so I was totally flying high on ideas and dreams. It seemed like every experience I had, every thought that blew through my mind, everything I touched turned into comic gold. I couldn’t stop The Funny.

Looking back now, I think it’s probably accurate to say that I was experiencing a bit of an extended manic state. Not that the things I was doing weren’t fun or really well done. But that I sort of spun out from there and kind of lost touch with reality a bit. “Delusional” is the word my psychiatric nurse practitioner used when she first diagnosed me with Rapid Mood Cycling Disorder, which I jauntily refer to as “Bi-Polar Lite”. Not grounded, spinning out into space, leaving my body, and yes, delusional. Like taking all the compliments I was receiving and then spinning them into this story that said that the next post I wrote on my blog would somehow be “discovered” and then I’d be an overnight sensation, and score a massive book deal, and become a hugely successful speaker and instantly be making enough money to support us so that my husband would no longer have to work anymore The Very Next Day.

Of course, this seems funny now (from the perspective of Stable Moods and Better Living Through Chemistry), and clearly from the Obviously-Not-Going-To-Happen  Files. But when you’re caught up in the mania mindset, thoughts like that feel like they are the truest and most reasonable thoughts that exist in the Universe.

But then, of course, came the depressive crash after the manic high. By September of 2006-a mere one month later-I was really depressed. And the depression lasted about a year, then ushered in The Takeover Of My Body By The Hostile, Alien C Diff Bacteria, which led to The Year Of Pain That I Thought Was Arthritis Pain But Actually Wasn’t, which finally led to the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. And now here we are.

I am slowly but surely recovering from the past 2 years of being deathly ill. And my mood cycling has been diagnosed and stabilized thanks to some wonderful medication. So I am slowly starting to feel better.

But the thing is, I definitely don‘t feel like I did back at the end of 2006. And I doubt that I ever will. I have tons of other ways of feeling good-it’s just that I’ll never again feel good in that particular way. And who knows if I would even want to. But it was the last “feeling good” period before my many years of illness, and so I’ve had this idealized version of it in my mind, one that I’m continually comparing to how I am now. And of course, “now” always loses in that comparison.

And it’s so painful to keep trying to make Now be Back Then. But I’ve been doing it so long that I don’t really know how to stop doing it.

And so somehow in my mind I have made this into a story that says, “I have not felt good since 2006,” which has then morphed into a story which says, “I have not been funny since 2006.” And so for the last few years I’ve been locked in an epic struggle between me, my desire to write, what I eventually eek out and end up writing and posting here, the stories my mind has created around writing and humor, and this blog. It has not been fun.

Because every time I’ve written something and posted it here, I’ve been trying to magically bend time and space so that when I write it is me writing back in August of 2006. (And I’m sure you can imagine how well that’s worked out for me.) And since, according to the laws of the known universe, what I want is impossible, in addition to rejecting What Is Now for My Idealized Version Of Fall 2006, I have also rejected everything I’ve written since September 2006 as complete and utter crap. Which is why I want to break up with my blog approximately every other day.

OK, I think that’s all the true confessions I can manage for today, so I will stop here and leave this To Be Continued.

In our next installment: “Jenny and the Cranky Fibro Girl Smackdown Pt. 2: Meet The Monsters.”

Milestones

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So I’ll just go ahead and let you know at the beginning of things here that this post is not a story, does not have any kind of moral, will probably not be funny, and has no punchline. But given the fact that I’m writing about my everyday life which does include this whole chronic illness thing, I realized that I need to take a few minutes and document the good things that have been going on lately, for the next time I get Illness Amnesia and forget that my life has ever been any other way than how I am feeling in that particular moment.

1. For the first time in 2 years I had both the energy and desire to participate in the holidays. And I only had some mild backlash of physical symptoms when I got home.

2. I have been able to start taking on household responsibilities again, which makes both me and my husband feel better.

3. I have discovered Bite The Candy sessions hosted by the fabulous Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.

“When we put something off – even a simple task – it can become encased in layers and layers of stories: our excuses for not doing it in the first place, our guilt about not having done it long ago, and so forth.

That unfinished task becomes a giant tootsie-pop of a to-do, yet at the center remains the yummy tootsie-roll goodness of having gotten the thing done.

And we we all know there are two ways to eat a tootsie pop: you can slowly lick your way to the center or you can just bite the candy and enjoy it now.

Sometimes you need to take your time. Sometimes you need to explore what your procrastination and resistance to this thing is all about. Sometimes you need to be patient with the process and yourself.

But sometimes all you need is a period of focused time – along with a bit of guidance, accountability, encouragement, humor and comraderie – to finally get that tootsie-pop off your to-do list. And that’s what Bite the Candy sessions are here for.

Bite the Candy teleclasses are held the last Thursday of each month.”

The first time I ever participated in one of these I had 2 boxes full of all the filing I did not do in 2009. Over a year’s worth of filing that I had pretty much decided was just going to hang around my neck forever, a giant, soul-sucking, forest-destroying albatross.

But thanks to the power of Not Having To Do This Really Icky Thing All By Myself, by the end of the session I had touched every single piece of paper in the box and sorted everything into piles, and by the next day I was able to put everything away. It was truly a miracle. I cannot TELL you what a load was lifted off of my mind.

So now I’ve been using the sessions to work on tax-related tasks, and again-The Power Of Not Having To Do Icky Things All Alone has been coming to my rescue. You should definitely check these out.

In The Interest Of Full Self-Disclosure: Because I am still me, I do still tend to get a little over-excited when I’m feeling better and have energy to do things, so I do FREQUENTLY have trouble stopping The Doing before I get a migraine or a pain flare-up or both. So I’m still working on that.

4. A couple of weekends ago I drove myself, all-by-myself, up to North Carolina for the first time in 2 1/2 years. There was a speaker I wanted to hear coming to a church near where my parents live, and I really wanted to go see her. And so I did.

Extra Bonus Yay: This was the also the first time in 2 1/2 years that I’ve wanted to go and do something fun like that for myself.

So I made it there, and I made it back, and I made it through the two days of the conference. And I was so relieved to know that if I ever HAD to take myself somewhere, I could. It’s been really hard-and scary-to be so dependent on other people.

Extra Bonus yay: I went to go and hear Angela Thomas, who is a pretty well-known author and speaker in certain circles. But before she was well-known she was just out of seminary, where her first job was as Minister to Senior High Girls at the church I attended at the time. She was there for the fall of 1987, and then she left to go on to other things. So I was 15 when she knew me.

Now I am 37, and yet: when I went up to talk to her before one of the sessions SHE TOTALLY REMEMBERED WHO I WAS! Which was just so cool.

In The Interest Of Full Self-Disclosure: While this turned out to be a totally awesome long weekend, I can now say with certainty that what I did was just a tad overly ambitious for where I am in my recovery, as upon my return I spent pretty much the next week and a half in abject misery, with every medical issue I have all trying to kill me at the same time. But at least now I know what my abilities and limitations are right now.

So there you go. It’s really nice to be able to document some Yay! items for a change.

Wow-And Here I Thought I Already Was Worrying About Everything Humanly Possible

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(See: Worrying, Perfecting The Art Of)

But apparently, I was wrong, as I learned to my dismay last night.

I was watching The Discovery Channel explain to me the gentle art of making ketchup, a process in which, up until that moment, I had had total faith and confidence, assuming-incorrectly, as it turns out-that it required not an ounce of my attention or concern in order to take place.

But I soon discovered just how wrong I was when I heard the narrator announce in a chilling tone that, “The velocity of ketchup is a huge worry.”

I cannot believe I let this one slip me by. But fear not! Because now I am ON THE JOB!