Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Lets talk about fear.

Fear is on my mind today.

Because something happened today, something entirely insignificant, but it made me think about the fear that has been quietly taking hold of me for the last couple of years (or if I want to be really honest about it, since I first started getting sick some 20 years ago).

You guys all know I'm going to Armageddon Expo in Auckland, and you know that my primary reason for going was to meet Paul Blackthorne, who I think is just fabulous. In the stupid hope that maybe I could perform whatever magic it is I've done on various other souls and make a friend of him. 
And now he's not going anymore, which has bummed me out a little, and not for the obvious reasons. Well for the obvious reasons AS WELL, I mean I'm bummed that I don't get the opportunity to meet this lovely person, but on a completely different level it is something else altogether that actually has me upset and it's taken me several hours of turning my head upside down to figure it out. Because I knew I was far more emotional than I had any reason to be. That I would normally have just shouted FUCK very loudly and moved on, instead I wangsted myself into a corner.

And here's why (at least here's the conclusion that lightbulbed me an hour or so ago). My STILL undiagnosed medical issues are STILL deteriorating. I'm SCARED that I'm not going to find an answer, I'm scared that even if they do find an answer there won't be anything they can do about it - it's quite possible that that is projection, the Fibromyalgia I've been living with most of my adult life resists treatment, it's more or less default that very little helps. But as I lose more and more function in the left side. Well. Lets just say I had a moment of thinking "what if this is my last shot at something cool?" And things went downhill from there.

Fear isn't real. I know there's actually a reasonable shot that the neurologist assigned to me will figure it out. And that once he does there's also a reasonable shot they will be able to at least improve things for me. It's just a matter of more tests, more poking and prodding, until they're looking at the right thing. But Fibromylagia makes a paranoid of you. I've had so many negative tests in my life that it's actually hard to see testing as a hopeful process anymore. 

I didn't start this to whine about my sad-arse situation. I started this to talk about fear, and what a bloody killer it is. Because no matter how stupid I know I'm being, it still sits at the back of my head nagging at me. And it still leaps up and tries to throttle me whenever there's some thing that I used to be able to do but now can't. And if I, with my unnatural ability to stop, remove myself from the black hole and analyse the shit out of my behaviour, can still manage to get so bloody wound up it, it does not bode well for the less prepared. Did I mention my ego? I have a really big ego too. 

But seriously. Fear is the mind killer*. And chronic illness is a big driver of fear. I'm usually in excellent control (or at least I WAS until all this new shit came up), usually very able to understand the difference between the imagined and the real and tell the imagined to just fuck off. But this stuff has been creeping up on me and today grabbed me all unawares. THE BASTARD. 

So all my fellow sufferers, and sadly I know far too many of you are. Feel the fear and tell it to FUCK OFF. Or to put that another way, if you're struggling for the love of ME talk to someone. Me if you like, though fair warning to those unused to unburdening themselves to me I'm quite harsh. The marshmallow is only on the outside**. But talk to someone. And never feel like no one cares, because I absolutely guarantee you I DO. 

Peace. Out.

* Recognising where this quote comes from earns you bonus points
** What marshmallow? I hear you say. Let's say that compared to the cast iron on the outside, my soul is dark star matter. My heart is another story. 

1 comment:

  1. Fear is real. It's a pretty basic part of our human makeup really.

    But /because/ it is real we can recognise, define, confine, and address/come to terms with it.

    [hugs]

    ReplyDelete