Hearts Grow Fonder

I am having a better than average week right now, for me at least.  I decided to take the week "off", which is not hard to do since I stay at home all day anyhow. I decided that other than my simple weekly chores, I was not going to do anything this week.  No art projects, no pottery, no making jewelry.  No photographing or listing anything in my Etsy shops.  No working on our upcoming yard sale or my next craft show. I haven't so much as looked at a paint brush or glass bead or price tag this week. It's hard to admit you need a break from something that, in reality, is fun and not stressful.  But I just wanted to not do any of it.

This week I've just been sitting and reading.  Keeping the TV off, nose stuck in a big fat 25-year-old paperback, trying to drink lots of water and eat plenty of fresh fruit.  And I feel okay.  It was a good week to kick back- after about a month of infernal drought, we've had rain for the past four days.  When it's dark and gloomy out, I like to sit on the couch with the lamp on and listen to the heavy raindrops plinking on the metal of the chimney.

After ten weeks at his first assignment, J's second assignment is going to stretch out for at least five weeks that he knows of, and maybe more.  He's working nights again, but at this location they don't have as many issues and so his "night" is less grueling at 9-10 hours instead of 12-13 hours.  He's getting more sleep, and he's sounding a lot less frustrated when I talk to him right now.  He'll be home this whole weekend.  After that, he heads back out for two weeks straight, without coming home on the weekend.  Instead, he's booked a flight for me so that I can come out there and spend three days with him over that next weekend.  He's already lined up a baseball game the first night, a football game the second night.  My husband, gotta love his energy and desire to experience all of life.

I'm finding that my time, my life, is now compartmentalized into "with J" and "without J".  I know you expect me to write that I'm always happier with J.  No, I'm finding that's not necessarily true.  When I'm down, I'm down. When I'm up, I'm up.  I certainly enjoy life more and have more fun being with my husband, but I find my moods are controlled by the depression and the chronic pain.  They both dictate how I'm going to feel, how I'm going to behave, how I'm going to relate to the world around me.  If I'm home alone, if I'm out with J- it doesn't matter, the pain doesn't care.  When it takes hold of you, it doesn't give a crap where you are or who you're with. I always try to resist it, and I promise you that fighting against it will wear you down even quicker.  Honestly, J doesn't let me sit around and miss out on the weekends, he wants to go do things so I'm at his side.  I know if I were to say, honey I am just in too much severe pain today, I can't- he would be okay with that.  But since I never complain to him, he encourages me to not let the aches get in the way of our life together.  I'm madly in love and appreciative and utterly exhausted all at the same time.

J told me this past weekend that when he gets on the plane on Fridays, all he can think about is getting back home to me as fast as possible.  J is very physical in his expressions of love.  He is a hugger and a kisser.  Even out in public he loves to grab and rub and pinch and poke and tease, he is always wanting to touch and to be touched.  When we sleep, he even has to have his foot nudging my leg all night long, or a hand on my shoulder.  I've never had to beg for a back rub, he's there happily doing it.  I confess that on days when I'm down, when I hurt, when I'm feeling like shit, I am not as receptive to his wanting me to sit close to him or wanting to cuddle or wanting to hold me.  I am not as receptive to his affections.  I'm not talking about saying no to sex because I'm not in the mood, I'm talking about a wonderful caring man who revels in my presence and only wants me to scoot over towards him just a little bit more on the couch.

I'm an ungrateful bitch, I'm sitting here almost complaining about a husband who likes to snuggle and who enjoys giving me a foot rub while we're watching TV.  I'm talking about shrugging off the loving touches of a man who still wants to be with me even though I'm fat and old and grumpy.  What is wrong with me? I am married to the type of man that many women will never know, can only dream about, and some days I have to tell him to take a step back because he's too close to me.  It's like I anticipate my pain, and in essence I'm pushing away from him.  J never never ever causes me pain, it's my body, not anything he does. But some days, I hurt so much that even when he helpfully rubs the sore places, it's too much and I have to ask him to stop.

I know it's just the pain and depression.  It's not a true version of how I feel about my husband.  In some ways he understands, he will say "are you hurting today?" if I pull away from him when he hugs me too tight.  Other times I can tell he feels slighted and rebuffed.  This last weekend, at red lights he kept leaning over in the seat to kiss me, and after a few kisses I would just smile at him but not lean towards him.  I could tell he was sad.  Quite frankly, even leaning over that little bit in the car hurt my body like a mother fucker, and I'm not kidding.  I wasn't saying I didn't want to kiss J, I was just in so much pain I couldn't move that way anymore.  And I get sick of telling him so often that I'm in pain, and surely he's got to be tired of hearing it too, although he would never say that to me.

I don't know what we'll do this weekend.  He gets home super early Friday morning, although he will have to sleep for awhile after working all night.  Then he doesn't head out until Monday morning.  I'm sure we will find plenty to do since we are always such go go go people.  By the end of the weekend, I'll be feeling it in my back and shoulders and feet and head.  I'll get cranky but do my best to hide it, but those of you with perceptive spouses know you can never really hide that kind of stuff from them- they always know.  After this weekend, then we are out of town on trips the next three weekends.  I am unbelievably thankful that I have a husband who wants to spend time with me, who works hard so we can travel and be together and have a great time.

I try to put on my best and brightest happy face for J, I try to be cheerful and enthusiastic and adventurous whenever I'm with him.  But sometimes the pain just wipes all of that out of me.  I have got to work on this.  Now that he travels full time, I'm only with him 2-3 days a week.  I have the rest of the week to sit around and feel sorry for myself and mope in my misery if that's what I want to do.  When I'm with him, even if it hurts my back when he holds me tightly to him, I've got to suck it up.  For him.  I love it when he wants to wrap me in his strong arms and give me a great big hug just because, and I've got to pretend that it doesn't light every nerve ending in my body on fire.  I'm just so damn tired of that pain and how poorly I react to it.  I'm so afraid that one day, he will be tired of my reactions too.

I guess it's just been bad lately, but luckily I am not always in this much pain, not every day, not every weekend.  And besides, J is the best medicine in the world, no doctor could do more for me.

MISS GEE

Even My Toes Hurt

I have been in so much pain the last few weeks.  If you are a real life friend and see my Facebook or Instagram, you would never know it.  I'm still in that habit of pasting on my pathetic fake happy smile.  I still jump up and go whenever and do whatever anyone wants to.  Starting in September we have three major vacations, several holiday trips, and multiple mountain weekends already booked for every month through February of next year.  It makes me exhausted and ill at ease just to think about it all.  I love to travel, but right now, I dread it instead of anticipating it with excitement.  To sit in a car for hours, to deal with a two-hour plane ride, seems like torture instead of a fun adventure.

This has been weeks now of absolutely everything hurting, from head to toe.  Normally it's just one thing or another, but right now it seems to be a cascading failure of my entire body.  Migraines, my lower back and hip, my knee, the arthritis in my hands.  Everything.  Even my feet are hurting right now, which is weird because I don't do anything that would trigger that and I've never had problems with them in the past.  Right now I can barely walk on them in the mornings and evenings.  It hurts to sit, it hurts to stand, it hurts to walk, it hurts to lie in bed.  The pain even overwhelmed me into a crying jag yesterday afternoon. The only time I feel better is when I'm floating in a deep, super hot bath filled with salts and herbs.  I'm not a fish, I can't stay in the tub forever.

I have an appointment on Monday morning with a new doctor, another specialist, for my female/menopause issues.  I don't think any of those problems are causing pain, it's just annoying symptoms that won't go away and are causing minor but irritating complications to my daily life.  I'm sure this will turn into several appointments- doctors rarely if ever can do it all at the first visit.

These days I don't take anything stronger than over the counter pain relievers.  And even with those, I have to be at an unbearable ten before I reach for the bottle.  If I took ibuprofen every time I had an ache, I would be taking them around the clock and who knows what my kidney and liver would look like.  So my choices are- eat my insides alive with Motrin or just suffer all day with pain.  Not much of a choice.  It's been a terrible cycle lately.  I know I need to go to yoga or get on the treadmill because it will make me feel better, but I feel so awful right now I can't get myself to go back on those routines.  All I want to do is sit on the couch with a heating pad on my back and a cold cloth on my head.  It sucks big time.  The resentment that I'm letting my life pass me by starts to dig away at my already delicate mental balance.

I spent too many years walking around in a zombie state, driven by all the prescription pain meds my doctors kept me on.  They never worked.  I had to keep taking more pills a day, at higher doses.  Nothing ever worked, nothing ever offered a single sliver of relief.  Pills like oxycodone, shots of morphine at the hospital, patches stuck on my body soaked with lidocaine, repeated epidurals in my back at pain clinics.  For years I took pregabalin, a drug with a normal dose of 300mg a day- my doctor had me up to 1500mg a day and it still had no effect on my pain whatsoever.  In 2009 when I went to a new doctor, she said she couldn't give me anything stronger, couldn't raise my dosages.  So slowly I just got off everything, and as prescriptions expired I didn't ask for renewals.  I decided that if none of it was going to help, why the hell was I going through all of that shit?  The money, the time at the appointments, all for what?

Frankly, I don't hurt any worse today drug-free, than I did back then when I stayed loaded up on them.  The pills never helped me feel better physically, but they made me just not care about anything, including the pain.  I was dull, depressed, and hating myself when I stayed drugged.

I do understand people who get addicted to pain killers.  I have a cousin who did time in a federal prison for it.  I guess it never happened to me because they never worked, so there was really no point.  No craving, no urge.  There was nothing to crave!  I always took my medications in the way that the doctors prescribed them.  I never took too many, I never took them too often.  I was more worried about how the drugs might destroy my internal organs if I overdid them.  So once I was off everything, I just shrugged my shoulders and said "eh" because it was over.  I think if the prescription pain meds ever DID offer relief, I may have been one of those people who needed them to survive.

My physical therapist, who I see once a month now- down from twice a week- wants me to try her acupuncturist. I'm not against it.  I just have little hope for it so I haven't decided yet if I want to embark on that path.  I do believe in alternative health care.  I don't blame my primary care physicians for throwing pills at me, because that's what they're trained to do.  I know so much of it is in my control.  Losing weight, moving more, eating better, taking vitamins, going to yoga, changing to organic foods and chemical-free products in my pantry.  I get "Mother Earth Living" and "Clean Eating" and "Vegetarian Times".  I just don't bother to take all the steps I see easily spelled out on the glossy pages.

The pain gets into my mental space, because I start to really get down on myself.  I'm lazy, I'm not taking advantage of my free time and easy life to make the changes I need to.  I have access to everything I need, J has given me the whole world in order to take care of myself, and it's like I'm slapping away the helping hand of fate.  Why?  Because I'm that person who sits on their ass watching Project Runway marathons, hoping for a pizza to magically appear at the door- with extra cheese and dipping sauce.  I must take control of my own health!  Can I get rid of all of the pain?  Maybe not.  But I do know that sitting around feeling sorry for myself is not the path I need to be on.

MISS GEE