I Hit My Peak With The Sandwich

I like to think of myself as a very rational, stable, level-headed person. I play the mediator well, I'm fair and open minded. I have emotional outbursts, of course, but they only tend to come about just before my period. Oh wait. This was me three years ago. And three years ago, I didn't have a constant headache. Three years ago I was in control. Now, it's like PMS all the time. I struggle with daily life under the weight of crippling pain and when things don't go the way I expect them to, I often become a dramatic crybaby, having histrionics over every little thing I can't control. It's embarrassing to admit how upset I get over a mess in the kitchen, or shoes in the middle of the floor. Usually I remember to curb myself, after the initial rage overwhelm. I breathe slowly and deeply, try to step outside my emotions and remind myself that it's not as big of a deal as it feels. And usually, this will calm me down, allow me to express my displeasure without sobbing, or screaming, and we can all move on with our day. But, two usuallys don't make an always, and I do have breakthrough crazy. And I say crazy not as a slang term to mean I occasionally act a little outrageous, but because I sometimes wonder if I am developing some psychosis over here.

It would be expected, wouldn't it? Three years without a break. Just pain, day in and day out. I go to sleep with pain and I wake with pain. I talk through pain and eat through pain and poop through pain and try to be happy through pain. Try try try. I never stop trying, but somewhere along the line here, my success rate plummeted. I have bursts of happiness. I still laugh and enjoy activities when my head permits, but I'm not the same. And I'm afraid of who I'm changing into. This new person that I am, she has no patience and she gets SO ANGRY, and she cries easily and she's really becoming very pessimistic.

I am resistant to antidepressants because I have had horrible side effects. But the side effects of leaving my misery untreated are really starting to show.

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ON A HAPPIER NOTE. Wendy at Transform Your Chronic Life has endowed me with The Lovely Blog Award, which has led me to find a few more awesome people to add to my own reading list. Again, I'll be shirking the passing of the award, preferring instead to spread the love evenly. So, check out my blogroll, because they are all Lovely Blogs.

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I've been walking nearly every day. Sometimes it's up and down our street or around the block, but I'm often going for an hour or more on my treadmill. It is so hard some days, but always worth it.

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I submitted an older post, The Falling of Pride, to last month's Disability Blog Carnival which was kindly hosted by the great Dave Hingsburger. The carnival ended up in two parts, so here's one and two.

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I'm having computer drama and currently have no access to Hulu. So sad. Instead, I've been catching up on my reading, devouring some fluffy Grishams a friend lent to me ages ago, and watching cable, which I mostly hate. We've rented a few movies from our local Redbox, and I feel like I've rejoined the human race a bit now that I've seen Avatar and Shutter Island. They were both pretty and engaging, but predictable. Actually, no. I need to make special mention of the end of Shutter Island. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but Leonardo diCaprio's choice really hit me where I live. Sometimes, you guys.

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I made a sandwich today that you all need to know about. I made a little tuna salad (one can of tuna, some plain yogurt and yellow mustard) and mixed it up with a chopped apple. I slapped the tuna-apple mix on some wheat toast that'd been lightly smeared with horseradish and sweet mustard and topped it off with fresh basil and softened red onions. SO good.

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There are a lot of somewhat abandoned chronic pain blogs out there. I wonder what happened to their writers. Did they get better? (Will I ever get better?) Did they get busy? Are they writing somewhere else under a whole new blogging identity? Did they die? (I always go there, for at least a second.) Do those abandoned blogs live on forever in the vastness of cyberspace or will they eventually get chewed up by some url gobbling monster, like the one that finally ate that embarrassing old profile I made up for some obscure short-lived social media in 1998 in which I said things that I am really glad are finally not accessible through a creative google search for my name. Things to ponder.

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I've been needing my glasses more when watching tv, as the subtitles are uncomfortably blurry without. Unfortunately, I can only go so long wearing the glasses before my face starts aching from the pressure points and my eyes start feeling unfocused and throbby. So, for half of the shows we watched last night, my head hurt from trying to read the blurry captions and for the other half, my head hurt and I was nauseous from the distorted perception with the glasses.


Another day, another trigger, another ice pack, another blog post.