I Don't Know About You, But I'm Still Feeling 22

Tonight as I sit here in my cozy bedroom with my little lanterns providing soft light to my thoughts, I'm musing about the coming year.

No, it's not New Year's Eve, but the eve of the celebration of the day of my birth.  Tomorrow, I turn another year older, so in a way it feels like a mid year New Year and another fresh start.

What do I want from this year?  Well, I would like to be cured of my chronic illnesses, but magic wands are still in the early stages of research and development!

Seriously though, what would I like to see happen this coming year?  Some thoughts...

• For my health to improve further, or at least stabilise.  This would provide me with a more stable platform to live my life by for sure, and would also make planning for the near future just that little bit easier!

• To find a medication or treatment to relieve or at least manage my symptoms.  This really has been an ongoing struggle for me, and I've never found anything that works really well for any longer than about 2 weeks at a time.  If that could change, it would be lovely.

• To do well in my final University papers and graduate in July!  It's only a short course, but I am so proud of myself for achieving this during 2016 despite all of the challenges life and my health have thrown at me.  Now to decide if I want to do the follow on course...

• Get back into my guitar playing, and sing more.  Guitar has fallen by the wayside recently as I have just been too fatigued to work on it, but I'm hoping to get back into it soon.  Music is one of my greatest joys and is a wonderful form of stress relief, so I will make more of an effort as energy and my Uni schedule allow.

• To develop a greater acceptance for where my life is at, and to be at peace with the fact that I'm exactly where I am meant to be.  Long term goal this one, but with my faith, family support and perseverance, I'm determined to be more accepting and patient with myself.

• Make sure I nurture my body and love it as much as I can in every way possible.  To feed it well, exercise regularly, rest when it tells me and just to take great care of it.

• Figure out a practical career path.  The Physiotherapy dream is still burning bright in my heart, but at the same time it feels as if it's fading away from me.  I know I would make a brilliant Physio (not to blow my own trumpet), but I'm coming to terms with the fact that pushing myself into 4 years of full time University study may not be the smartest thing to do!  I'm not ruling it out, but could really do with a solid Plan B in case it doesn't work out the way I have always hoped it would.

• To get back into art and creative pursuits more.  I am loving my University study, but it's exhausting me to the point that I don't really have the energy to do much else!  So I would like to find a little bit more of a healthy balance in my life between my study, online, real and creative worlds.

• For my family to know how much I appreciate them.  Saying thank you never feels like anywhere near enough of a repayment for all that they do for me on a daily basis, so it's kind of a wish really, but I hope they know in their hearts how grateful I am to have them in my life.

• To one day be well enough to take my brother out on an expedition like he has done for me so many times, and to just laugh and have fun with him without being in pain or having to find a bathroom.  That would be nice.

• For people to see me as normal, and to see past my illnesses.  I'm still a lovable, creative, kind person with a pretty good sense of humour, and I would like more of the people in my wider circle to realise that and treat me like they're talking to me as a person, not just someone with illnesses.

And just to live another great year, taking as many opportunities that come my way as I can, having fun, getting to know more people and just living the most beautiful life I can.

Being My Own Cheerleader

I know the title sounds cheesy, but that exact phrase was what sparked the idea for this post really, so I'm stuck with it!

Before your imagination starts running wild, no I have not joined a group that wears short skirts and waves pompoms in the air while chanting slogans for football teams!

The word cheerleader applies to chronic illness in my mind as a way to describe supporting yourself.  To cheer yourself on and be a strength that you can draw on when you need it most.

In the 2 and a bit years since my Endometriosis diagnosis, I have ended up with an unusual kind of team on my side, which is made up of immediate family, a few close friends, doctors, other medical practitioners etc. 

But although I have my 'team' around me, I have learnt that you can't survive the day to day chronic illness life by solely relying on your team mates.  Sometimes they get tired, burnt out or just let you down when you least expect it. 

So, although the team is an important part of your support network, a lot of the strength and will to carry on has to come from within. 

It has to come from you.

Believe me, some days it feels almost impossible to carry on, and you feel like there is absolutely nothing left in the tank.  This feeling of being down and hopeless can last anything from a few hours to many days in a row.  It's so important to let yourself have some down time, because it is exhausting being your own cheerleader and always willing yourself to carry on.  Don't let your brain tell you that you are weak for shedding a few tears, or having a day where you just need some time alone to process things.  It's completely natural, because let's face it, no one can be happy and brave all of the time!

But it is also important to reboot.  To use that inner strength and courage to bring yourself out of a dark patch.  To see the light again and bring that positivity that lies inside all of us to the surface, even if it feels like it is buried deep within you.

Today may be a bad day, a hard day, an impossible day...

But tomorrow is a whole lot of new, a clean slate full of possibilities.  So dig out that inner cheerleader and help yourself through whatever is going on in life right now.  Once you see the light again and realise that what you do have is precious, you will feel more positive and the burden that you carry every day will feel a little bit lighter.

So Many Ideas...

Blogging is a strange thing to me.  In the first place, I never thought I would start a Blog for lots of reasons, including the fact that no one would probably read it, and also that I'm quite a private person, so didn't think I would have it in me to spill my thoughts onto the internet!  But I took the plunge and started, and I'm still coming back, so part of me must enjoy it...

The truth is, hardly any people that I know in real life know that this blog exists, basically because I haven't really made a point of talking about it.  I think part of it is shyness, and the other part is a fear of being judged by others about the fact that I write about my health issues and life in general and post it on the internet.  I'm pretty sure that most people would think that was one of the strangest thing you could do when you have a chronic illness, to write about it for the world to see.  I know, even reading those last couple of sentences back makes me think 'What the?  Why on earth am I writing about my Endo journey online so that a whole lot of strangers can read it?'

Strangely enough though, writing about what's going on in my Endo life on my blog is soothing.  It's quite cleansing to write about my frustrations, health concerns and issues that I think are important, and I guess a Blog is just somewhere to try and put that jumble of thoughts together.  Quite often, I feel the need to let off some steam when I have a lot of thoughts running around in my brain, and blogging is just one of the ways I manage my stress levels when everything gets to be too much.

Although, in saying that, I'm not a very good blogger really!  If you keep on scrolling down my Blog pages to have a peek at older posts, you will notice that there are quite a few gaps in the dates.  In some places, it looks like I haven't written anything for months!  This is not the case though...

My Blogger account is full of draft posts - yes really!  When ideas strike, I open up the web page or app and jot down a title, or a few sentences that I think would make a good post.  But, as with many things when you live a life with chronic illness, that's often as far as it goes, despite my best intentions.  Those ideas don't always make it to the blog for many reasons, including lack of energy or focus to write, loss of  inspiration or motivation to write on that topic, or just plain old writer's block.  Basically, sometimes I feel the need to blog it out, and other times I can go for many weeks quite happily without feeling the urge or inspiration to write at all.

I could commit to writing on a certain day of the week, or writing so many times a month, but I'm just not going to do that.  My Course of study starts tomorrow, and that's something I will definitely use deadlines and planning for, more so than other things like blogging where it is a choice whether or not I choose to do it that day.

 I don't need the added pressure and stress that comes with yet another deadline to meet, or the disappointment of not doing what I promised myself I would, because that just doesn't help my emotional state of mind.  There are many things I do regularly and commit to, and I just don't want blogging to start to feel like a chore - I want to enjoy it, and be inspired to write when the feeling strikes.

So, I'll write when I write, and if you don't hear from me for a while, don't worry!  I'm still around, probably just dealing with a downturn in the health department or a short term, acute case of writer's block :-)