It's such an obvious thing to organize a plan for anything major in life. A career, a disability, a marriage, a child, an illness, what color to dye your hair. When we got into "planning mode" we often underestimate what we actually need. We "poo poo" it sort of speak and pretend we are hanging up our super hero cape but what we are really doing is when the whole house is asleep we pull our cape from it's box hidden under our bed, take it into the other room and steam clean that thing for the next time, before we lay it flat back in it's box and re-tuck it under our bed where it's hidden. You know, because you promised everyone you would lock it up for a while. Well this doesn't last long because before you know you forget to tuck it back under your bed and it's hanging somewhere in the house and you are caught steam cleaning it...and maybe talking to it.
In case you haven't figured out the cape is our ego. Our want to please. The validation we seek to the best we can be. This becomes an almost impossible thing to adjust when once upon a time we "were the best" or was able to "please everyone" who needed our assistance. You go back into the mind frame of "but I used to back then" or "well I did it before so I will figure it out again".
Good and healthy right? We can do it right? Insert loud low pitched annoying "wrong" buzzer here.
As we grow and develop more on this earth we are constantly making adjustments.Welcome to learning. I feel like while I write this blog I am re-teaching myself on how to even be human. We often just yes people to death when they give us advice because making the adjustment is either beyond or comprehension, we are terrified of change (something's wrong with the house), or we are just east coast, Italian and a scorpio; meaning super donkey status stubborn.
I'm making some major adjustments in my life and I am beyond blessed that support system goes beyond just friends and family. I have a work family as well. People are constantly put in our lives to either enhance our lives, teach us something, destroy our lives (if we allow them to that is), offer a difference in perspective, bring our joy, and feel loved and offer love in return. Then there is that category of they are just there to drive you nuts, yet there is some twisted masochistic side we have in which we keep allowing them to drive us nuts. Gotta them em' anyways right?
I recently have made a choice or should I should say my "body" made the choice for me, that I am still trying to catch up to life that's moving at 140% speed and I am barely getting up to 10% speed. I didn't listen to my gut and kept trying to do more than what my body will allow. Basically I have a permanent life long supervisor or boss now; which is my BODY. It regulates me, tells me what to do, warns me when I'm putting in too much unapproved overtime and tells me what my reports were not generated properly. Welcome, it's super fun...NOT! I made some adjustments and kept pushing and on Monday morning of this week I lost the feeling in my left leg from the knee down. Yup, I didn't listen to my boss. That's 1 write up for me. I've honestly battled with feeling guilty throughout this whole journey so far. I feel like I need to constantly prove myself and prove that there's nothing wrong with me. Not that I'm saying that having MS is something wrong but it is something enough to require me to move around my puzzle pieces and accidentally lose some of the middle puzzle pieces. We only like the edges anyways right?
I wasn't ready to accept that my world is totally different now and I still feel myself longing to feel how I felt "before". I miss that feeling. I miss that Brittany. The funnier part of this whole moment of fruition is that I felt like this prior to my diagnosis even. I knew for years I was chipping away at the emotional glue that holds Brittany together. From one after the other abusive relationship to over exerting myself with an insane schedule.I started off solid as a strip of steal and now I'm basically scotch tapping together a rubber band and calling it "normal". I was not adjusting enough to make it solid and cohesive to what my body was writing me up for. Hearing someone tell you "you don't have to be everyone's hero" is like telling Superman he should work at the local deli. That is for sure a hard pill to swallow. I was drowning and the world was throwing me clue like life rafts and I refused to reach my arm out to catch one.
I had to at least go from saving the world to working at Costco instead. It was still large and chaotic enough to feel some what comfortable and familiar.
Bottom line. I am setting more limits for myself, looking into different forms of therapy in a more holistic approach and over all in the mind frame that I will try anything to feel some form of back to normal again.