Fake It Till You Make It!

Seriously.  It takes a LOT of energy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and fiercely or strategically 'Life' when you are healthy and your children are neuro-typical.

It requires the endurance of a marathoner to parent a-typical children who absolutely rock your world as they walk to the beat of their own drums.

It requires almost nuclear power to experience the effects of being chronically ill or in pain and functionally accomplish anything else in life.  It takes infinite power, from absolutely divine source, to function in the world and not let others know how real the struggle is.

I focus on the potential of things and often ignore the cold.hard.facts of the muck and the mire. However, sometime in the past year I had the realization that if I were born in the Jane Austin era or even in the early 1900s I would absolutely be one the community referred to as "sickly" or I would find myself bed-ridden.  I am grateful to live now, but I am absolutely exhausted striving to appear well when I'm just NOT.

I am functionally ill and it's exhausting.  I suspect the root of my struggle to adult/parent is a bit of self-inflicted trauma mixed with mental illness. I watched Modern Love on Amazon and the third episode with Anne Hathaway absolutely dumbfounded me. It was as if someone SAW me and then wrote the episode with the version of me that made it through college earlier in life and didn't have children. In retrospect, I have a cyclical pattern that feels more like a rabbit hole than a spiral staircase.

Could I be on a bunch of different meds to mediate my life, sure, but the idea of doing that without knowing the root cause or the ultimate side effects absolutely freaks me out. However, because of the trifecta of me being so.darn.good at faking wellness, most doctors having only 15- 30 minutes allocated per patient, and modern allopathic 'managed care' deeming so many things 'not medically necessary', here I sit waiting on referrals and blood-work while paying $1500/month for this 'Bronze' level health insurance.  I did get my most recent primary care doctor, who had been my doctor for three years, to finally see the cycle of my illnesses and she began ordering tests, right before she left the practice and we moved. Those tests did reveal abnormalities in my immune function, no surprise there since I have had an active shingles out-break at least every six months the past 7 years and at least once a year, but closer to every 9 months, the six years before that.

Because of the cycle of interacting with society and falling ill, mixed with family travel and attempting to hold down a job, I have not made it to church on Sunday in almost a full year.  I do generally get my kids to youth activities during the week, but lately I have not been able to both transport my daughter to & from her dad's and make mid-week activities.  I absolutely can not keep a clean house, love on my children, feed my family, connect with nature/myself/the divine, maintain an intimate relationship with my partner, and be actively engaged in any sort of career. I can do maybe, two things a day, maybe.

I could REALLY use a community/ circle of friends who see and know me, who could and would show up each day to literally just be my friend and talk to me while I work or work beside me to keep the house, make food, craft/dance/laugh, but I can't even get out of the house regularly enough to build those friendships. Right now, I can show up in text messages, occasional phone calls, or car-pooling, but even those are a stretch for me, which TOTALLY makes me a cruddy friend. So, instead, I show up when I can, tag people on social media and pray, that is my current wheelhouse. At the same time I am seeking to build an intentional community where other women who are trying to hold down their respective forts can come together and instead life one another up, but it's slow going at my current pace.

All that to say: I SEE you. I WANT to connect with you. I WANT you to live here with me as we build YOUR space. I CAN NOT wait to see you & dance/laugh/ craft with you.