I have a confession to make: I’m struggling this week and I almost didn’t post this.
I made a promise to myself a few months ago that this blog would finally become a priority for me, regardless of work and family obligations. After ten years of writing on and off, I wanted more consistency. I wanted more growth. I wanted (maybe) an avenue to publishing someday down the road. So, for the past four months, every Tuesday morning at 6AM, I publish a new piece about whatever is on my heart and mind. It may be funny, sassy, snarky, sentimental, educational, or even highly personal. This week, it’s highly personal.
Frankly, I almost didn’t post this because it’s too personal. But I’ve found that when I’m the most open, honest, and raw, I usually touch a nerve with people and it helps. It helps me and it helps them. So here it goes …
I’m struggling, once again. For the past few days, I’ve found myself slipping back into that dark place I was in most of 2021. That place where I don’t want to see or talk to anyone because I’m too negative, too down, too self-pitying.
Living with an autoimmune disease can be rough. There are limitations and complications that make every day life both challenging and frustrating. And even when you have your disease under control, the weight of it is always there. That weight can be suffocating.
For the past two years, my medication hasn’t been working. Something is going on in my body that is creating a cascade of problems, the biggest of which is unstoppable weight gain. This may seem trivial and vain, but to someone with PTSD and a past history of sexual abuse/assault, not having control of my body is very triggering. Add to that the anxiety of not knowing what is causing this deterioration, and I’m a human Molotov cocktail.
I’ve spent ten years fighting to improve my mental and physical state. Multiple rounds of EMDR therapy and a healthy addiction to lifting heavy weights (plus working with a functional medicine doctor) helped me reach a place where I not only looked my best, I felt my best. Calm, confident, strong, energized, powerful, and in control. I was happy — and I could do a real pull-up (my forever fitness goal). I was thriving!
Then something changed. In the beginning of 2020, I was diagnosed with mercury poisoning and went through a nine-month chelation process to clear it from my system. From there, things got worse, and my health — both physical and mental — has been spiraling downward ever since (despite the mercury being gone and my diet/exercise routine not changing).
Every day, I’m fighting tooth and nail to get back to where I was — happy, healthy, lean, and strong. I go to therapy weekly. I’m seeing specialists and ruling out illnesses. But without a diagnosis, I still feel helpless and, at times, hopeless. As I said, not having control of my body is very triggering for me, so I’m struggling. Some weeks are better than others … This week hasn’t been one of those weeks.
The rational side of my brain knows that it’s okay to not be okay, and that you need to embrace the suck before moving on. [I wrote an article about this for AutoimmuneSisters.org that you can read here.] Sitting with your negative feelings and really experiencing them is needed in order to move past them. And I will move past them. But this week, I’m sitting in the sadness of my lost self.
Next week, though … I’ll be back at it, fighting the good fight to find answers and get my shit back together. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. I may have issues (and a ton of extra pounds), but I’m still a bad ass MF — just like my sign says.
-LJDT
