Adjusting The Sails

( Updated and Extended, on August 14th )

I'm lying here feeling .... welll, honestly, I don't even know what I'm feeling.

I'm fairly sure that this post is going to be somewhat of  a rant ... a gush of feelings that have been brewing inside me for so long, I feel like I'm going to go mad if I don't get them out. I just have to write!!!

Sometimes it's really difficult to figure out what it is that I'm feeling!!! Everything gets so overwhelming, and it makes it hard to process things, and to pick out & identify individual emotions.

 My whole body is pulsing with twitches, spasms, buzzing & a sort of pulsing - and I've spent most of the last few hours barely able to move. Barely able to even think, through the pulsing.

I feel that I'm a really gloomy person when I feel, and especially when I post, like this. I'm very aware that I need to find the peace and the joy that comes with finding something to hope on once again... but its alluding me right now. I'm not depressed I don't think - not any more than anyone dealing with my kind of life and situation wuld be. But I am really overwhelmed right now - there's just too much happening all at once. New scary symptoms, flare ups, stuff going wrong at home, the issues (ongoing) with my doctor, who still hasn't delivered on promises ... and now various appointments to sort out and to somehow find a way to get through without ending up in a full blown relapse. On top of that we found a lump on my beautiful dog Jessa, yesterday, so she has to go to the vets (without me!!) today. :( I can't even do that, and it makes me feel so useless!!! To be honest, (big tough me is about to admit that ...) I'm scared, and I feel small and once again,  on a running theme, invisible. Nothing seems to be going right, or easily. (Gosh I have so much to tell you guys and I don't even know where to start! I can't do it now anyway. I'm surprised i've been able to keep writing for this long!)

I'm feeling so frustrated with myself, too. So utterly useless. I can't manage to do any of the million and one things that need doing... and unless you've been there, no-one can know just how hard that actually is. Lying in bed all day is not all it's cracked up to be!! I really, really hate watching Anna (my carer) struggle to do things for me, and I can't even help. I feel like a waste of space too much of the time.

You know what I hate about M.E.?? I hate that you can never fully adjust to it.
You can never get used to it, because suddenly, bam!!!! something else, some new symptom, changed intensity, or new disability hits you full in the face, and you have to statrt adjusting and coping all over again. 

Blowing Away by Jon McGovern

On top of all that, yesterday I had a full on, in my face, flashback of my ex husband attacking me. (I'm a survivor of domestic abuse, for those of you new to this blog) Just what I needed to get through the day, huh? Honestly, I thought I'd pretty much got over what he'd done to me, and all the fallout from the years of abuse, and other people's reactions to it - but this flashback was pretty intense and afterwards I felt broken. Heartbroken. That was the man I had loved, but he used me and he hurt me. So on top of being overwhelmed, scared, and everything else - now added to the mix is a grief so massive that I feel like I'm breaking into tiny pieces and being flung to the wind. All over again!

Recently it seems like I keep putting my hope in things, trying to find someone or something that can help ... but my hope gets hit every time and then the only things to do are either give in to depression and panic, (which I'm simply not willing to do!) or find something new to hope into. But I know I'm strong enough to get through all this - and whatever else life throws at me. I have up until now! Afterall, I have Anna, my best friend in the whole world, fighting my corner and caring for me instead of going off to live her own dreams. I have some amazing online friends, who have got me through so much over the years! I have my dogs. And a family who loves me even though they don't really understand and can't really deal with it all. And I have the online ME community, which is also making such a difference in my life. Perhaps those things are the only hope I need right now, they're sure strong enough positive's .... afterall, there are so many people out there going through so much more than this. And well, because of the people 'around me', at least I'm now standing up (well, not literally, HA ... ooh, the irony of that statement!) and trying to get the help I so desperately need, and deserve!!!!!!


◦ - - ღ - - - Because I do deserve it. We all do!!!!! - - - ღ - - ◦

And on that note, albeit it something I know in my head but not yet my heart, I'll end this post!

Note : Sorry about all the mess of this post. I'll try to edit out all the typo's etc, tidy it up, maybe add pics, and tag it etc, tomorrow .... somehow i just needed to get this out... though i feel i've done a very poor and very short job of expressing myself.

I think I just needed to speak, to vent as many of the things that are
splintering me, crack by slow crack, as possible .....
for my feelings to not be so invisible as I myself have begun to feel!!

Update : 14th August

Thank God, Jessa is ok! The vet found quite a lot of lumps actually - but they are, as I was hoping, just fatty lumps, which she's had a couple of times before. He doesn't even want to bother removing them right now, and won't, unless they get bigger or start to bother her in some way. So that was a huge relief for us!! :) :) :)

We had my other dog, Kiya, checked out at the same time, and ironically, the story there was more worrying. A while ago, a different vet at the practice found a lump on her liver. Kiya's starting to get old now, and has a lot of really severe skin and immune problems, so we decided (on the info the vet gave us) not to bother doing anything to get it further checked out, because I wouldn't want to put her through any intense treatments as she is going through enough already. However, the vet we saw this week (One of the practice owners) checked the lump for us, and he thinks that it's on her spleen, not her liver. He can't be sure till we get a scan, which we're doing next week - but if it is on her spleen, it would be a fairly simple operation to remove her spleen. A completely different scenario to it being on her liver!!!!

Jessa, on a walk with me & Anna, on a rare holiday to Scotland in 2009

Kiya, curled up behind my knee - she loves to be close to us! In 2010

I'm pretty mad with the vet we saw initially, as this issue could have been sorted months ago ... but then at the same time, I'm so glad that he was probably wrong, because this means that Kiya's life will probably be much longer than I was thinking! Guess we'll have more information after she's had her scan next week. It means a general anaesthetic, (which is always very stressful and worrying for me, because of the risks) but hopefully it'll be worth it - and my dogs usually come out looking less harried than I do, rofl!


I've finally got to adding pictures to this post, and getting rid of all the typo's (sheesh there were a lot!!) - I had hoped to do it the day after I wrote this post, but I've been really struggling to get online, and my cognitive functions have been pretty poor, so that just wasn't gonna happen. Ah well, got there in the end!! :)

I'd love to hear your reply and I know it'll be valued by other readers too! I always try to respond, please just be aware that it can take me some time to find the energy to do so as I've been particularly ill recently and struggling to get online. Thanks for reading! :)

Adjusting The Sails

Tweet