1. An understanding that asking for help is okay
While this may still be a bit of a work in progress, I am getting more confident in asking for help when I need it. This was such a foreign concept, to my past self, this was basically in no way an option for me. I’m hard-headed, stubborn, prideful and that’s been a detriment to my health, but I am much more vocal when I need a little assistance. Help is out there if you only ask, and are open to receiving it.
2. A reason to slow down and listen to my body
When your body is acting in an “unnormal” way there is all this built-up fear in listening to your body because doing so would result in truths you are just not ready for. I equate it to spending my life running on high adrenaline, and with such an out-of-control speed, I got by ignoring the warning signs my body was giving.
Since my diagnosis, I heed every ounce of pain, strain, struggle, or subtle difference I experience and act accordingly.
3. My dream career, a stay-at-home mom, and the possibility of making time to write
I am ten steps closer to my dream career, a stay-at-home mom. I want to be there for everything when my wife and I have kids, I don’t want to miss a single second of our kid’s lives. Though how it happened was traumatic, in the end, once the smoke had cleared from the violent fire, I was on the exact path I always wanted to be. I never would have stepped away from the money I was earning. As if by design, I am exactly where I want to be.
4. The realization that my health matters. Everything I do and eat matters
For the first 24 years of my life, self-care was nonexistent and even strongly avoided at times. I scrapped by the best I could. Life was pretty tough starting out at 18. I worked too many hours, in very cheap and poor shoes, and I ate whatever I could manage in the small breaks I took. Money and the pursuit of obtaining it was an obsession. When you have no money, that’s the way it has to be.
Now, I take note of the amount and type of exercise I’m getting each day, followed by a strict recovery routine, and I make sound and conscious decisions about the foods I choose to eat. Though to be fair my diet is still a bit of a work in progress, but I do feel like I am heading in the right direction. I continue to take note and study each individual aspect of my day and the effects, whether positive or poor, it has on my health. I would highly recommend any sufferer of a chronic illness to do the same.
5. A better understanding of how my life has always been affected by my fibromyalgia, which helped to make more sense of my experience
Understanding, especially of something that has been so cryptic for so long, is such an amazing gift. For years I knew something was wrong with my body, but I didn’t know what. Having symptoms and experiences that make no sense to medical professionals and loved ones, is frightening. You feel lost and with no connections to others through experiences, you feel very lost and very scared.
While my fibromyalgia was an unnamed and unacknowledged issue, it helped me even back then now that I think of it. It has shaped me, influenced my choices, and somehow got me to a place in life that I feel hope and excitement for the further. Though the pain is crippling and the fatigue and so many other symptoms are debilitating I am exactly where I want to be in life.