Caution: Whining Ahead

Brace Yourself.

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I blogged the other day.  But I didn't put put it on my Facebook page, and I didn't add a picture and put it on my Pinterest page, basically I didn't promote it.  I wrote it and folded it up and put it in a dark corner where someone might stumble across it but most likely not.  And I did this for two reasons...

1) Because I didn't want to deal with the comments that would come of it.
2) Because it wasn't a happy post with a cutsie ending, moral or message.

What the hell kind of bullshit is that??

As far as the comments go, my opinions are my opinions and as sick and tired as I am of getting criticized, belittled or shunned by so-called friends because of them, to hide my opinions is to devalue them and...well...the terrorists win.  While shutting the hell up is obviously the path of least resistance and it makes those around me happier, it leaves me feeling like I don't deserve to HAVE an opinion.  It turns me into my worst enemy.  I need to cowgirl up and either defend my beliefs or disassociate myself from those who wish to belittle or devalue me because of them.

And my life is just not a happy, cutsie, moral-and-message-filled place right now.  It kinda sucks to be me.  And I don't want to be one of these people who just whines online about how hard their life is to get attention.  I don't want pity. But writing makes me feel better and part of the process is to share it.  I don't have a huge audience but more than once I've been told that something I wrote touched someone.  Who am I to assume that only the happy posts can do that?  Maybe someone else's life sucks a little less than mine right now and I can make them feel better.  Maybe someone else is just as miserable as me and I can help them feel less alone.  Maybe someone who has it far worse than me (and yes, I know there are millions) can slap some sense into me.  Who knows.  The gift or curse that I give to the world is my writing, humble as it is.  And I don't feel entirely whole when I don't write.

The difficulty will be in balancing honesty with privacy, all while not turning Blog over Lunch into a whine-fest.  Trust me, there is likely to be whining...but I'll try to keep it to a minimum.  And as for the balance, all I can do is give it a shot and hope you all will forgive me if I fall on my face once in a while, as I am prone.

Today is likely to be one of the last two yard-work worthy days of this year.  It's 11:03 am and it's 54 and sunny in Northeast Ohio.  There are twigs and branches and leaves and grass cuttings a-plenty to be stacked in the fire pit to dry today so that I may burn them tomorrow...but instead I stayed in bed 'till 10am, and here I sit in my jammies drinking coffee and writing.

Note that I say I "stayed in bed" 'till 10am...I was awake at 8:30 from a night of fitfull sleep.  I spent a total of 11 1/2 hours in bed and maybe slept five.  This is typical.  I am plagued with sad, scary, bizarre dreams and I am in a lot of pain.  I'm hoping the former is the result of the latter.

Right now, as I sit in my comfy chair, a chair whose cushions are stuffed with fluffy down, with my feet up on an ottoman bearing a down stuffed topper, every part of my body resting on any surface...from my heels to my upper back, hurts. This "contact-pain", as I have come to call it until I can get to a doctor and get a clinical term, combined with the fact that I have a bad back which prohibits me from sleeping on my back or stomach, and tendinitis in my shoulders causing pain when I sleep on my sides...well as you can imagine, bedtime is not my friend.

You would think this kind of misery in bed would cause me to get my ass up earlier in the morning, but depression has taken hold.  At least that's where I think the thoughts of "I don't want to get up because everything I have to do today sucks" come from.  So on Saturday and Sunday mornings I hit snooze and reset the alarm and basically doze until 10...because somehow in my head anything before 9am is respectable, between 9 and 10 is lazy and starting at 10:01 am I'm lumped in with the 300 pound women who grocery shop from the motorized wheelchair as they buy donuts with food stamps.

Basically...if I'm still in bed at 10:01 I become my mom...and I haven't quite sunk that low yet.

I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago and out of five blood tests, only the Anti-Nuclear Antibody test came back out of whack.  I'm told that this result simply indicates that I have inflammation in my body, which I could have told them without spilling a drop of blood but apparently I'm not a reliable witness.  Apparently this is not a very reliable test and if I were to turn around and take it again today it could come back drastically different.  But the result means that the next step is to visit a Rheumatologist on 11/21.  Apparently it might be  Rheumatoid Arthritis.  And a couple of people (not doctors) have said it sounds like Fibromayalgia or Lupus.  None of these potential diagnoses scare me.  I just want to know what it is so they can do something about it and so I can find out how best to help myself, or just not hurt myself any more.

I stopped working out a few weeks ago when I hurt my foot (fucking tendinitis again) and during what should have been a 2 or 3 day break for my foot to heal I realized that my shoulders and elbows felt better.  As much as I thought weightlifting was going to be my savior, I may have to rethink that.  My knees and ankles can't take lots of jumping around so most cardio workouts aren't an option, but my lower body does seem to respond well to squats.  I felt like I was actually having some success in isolating my abs with Les Mills Pump's ab tracks and was even making some progress with my old nemesis, lunges, until I hurt my foot.  But the chest presses and curls hurt my elbows and holding the weights on my shoulders for lunges & squats hurts my shoulders.  Doing the clean & press...my back and shoulders were not pleased.  I pushed through for two months thinking I just needed to build strength to support the tendons and my spine, but while some things seemed to get better, others got worse.

Guys, I'm just a mess.

So a couple days' break so my foot could heal has turned into, I don't know, maybe a month of not working out.  I've tried to do yoga but again, the tendons just scream at the stretching.  And I don't know if I'm doing further damage.

Obviously working out helps keep the depression at bay.

And of course what's the best way to deal with depression?  Food!

Sigh....

It's a spiral into a bad place for sure.

But I'm trying to just look forward.  If the doctor says I need to just get back to exercising and ignore the pain, that's what I'll do.  If he tells me I need to do a different kind of exercise, I'll do that.  I'm hoping he doesn't tell me I need to swim because I can't afford a gym membership, but I'll jump off that diving board when I come to it.  If he tells me I can't exercise I'll find a different doctor.  One thing this has taught me is that I need to work out.  It's imperative to my emotional well-being.

So it's now 11:40.  I feel a little better for having written, even if it helps nobody but me.  Now I'm off to the grocery store.

Insert cutsie ending, moral or message here.