I have so many wonderful things and people in my life that I am very grateful for. Fibromyalgia isn’t one of them. Which is sad because I talked to a psychic (quit rolling your eyes at me!) once who told me (essentially) that I won’t be healed until I get to the place where wouldn’t change a thing in my life. That I’d have to feel that everything in my life has meaning and I wouldn’t change anything that had happened in my life. And then I’d finally get to a place of peace.
Not change one thing. So I’d basically have to be happy to have had fibromyalgia?
Gonna take a long time to get there. Because, honestly, I’m not grateful for the pain, the anxiety, the never knowing whether or not I’ll be able to do something, anything, when my body or my brain calls for a time out. It’s frustrating. Can anyone honestly say that they’re grateful for that?
Last night I went out to dinner with St. John to celebrate our anniversary. We went to the same Cajun restaurant that we had our rehearsal dinner at for our wedding. But I made the mistake of checking my email right before we left.
There was a comment waiting for approval…someone wanting to ream me for my “I’d rather have cancer” post that I wrote several months ago. I was going through a really bad time when I wrote that. No excuses for what I wrote, and plenty of people let me have it for that post!
Only this person is on her deathbed from cancer and she was pissed that I was not grateful that I did not have cancer. It’s her right to be pissed. It’s my right to feel how I feel. I’m not sure why she’s taking the time to chew me out when she’s dying, but she’s got a right to her opinion. I just wish I hadn’t read it right before I was supposed to be having a happy time with my husband because it made me pretty morose.
And the fact that I’m not grateful that I don’t have a death sentence…I know I finally responded to her I was grateful I didn’t have cancer…and I am. Mostly. I guess. There are days when I wish I could quietly slide away… But with my big mouth, how likely is that to ever happen?
But you know what I mean. Living in pain is exhausting and sometimes you just want to walk away from it and that was the point I was at when I wrote that post. Whatever. Do NOT come at me telling me what I should think or say or feel. Ugh. That I should get into a verbal sparing match with a person who is dying…or I would admit that sometimes I’d rather not be alive…that’s how I roll. I sometimes wish I’d be a little more mature, but where’s the fun in that?
But it got me thinking about what the psychic said (you know what? Go ahead and roll your eyes. I’m not going to tell you what to do.). How am I supposed to be grateful for all the crap that comes with fibromyalgia? And how does that heal me?
I think maybe what you think, your frame of mind, can help you heal yourself. Or at least heal you from a really crappy attitude? I’m not sure. I read it online and in books and I hear people talk about it. And there are plenty of quotes like Buddah’s “The mind is everything. What you think you become.” to Dr. Wayne Dyer’s “ If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
I wish this little story had a happy ending but think of it more as a cliffhanger. Does changing the way you look at things, becoming more grateful for what you have, change you? And how does one go about making a lasting change in the way they look at things? What’s the impetus that makes the change stick…
