Isolation and the Deep End of the Pool.

If there's one thing I've learned from having a chronic illness, it is having to deal with feelings of ISOLATION. 

If I don't even understand what's going on with me, how can I expect anyone else to? The nature of my work, a home based studio photographer, is isolation enough, but to have to be isolated from true friends who do care and want to understand is something else in itself. Let alone the rejection and abandonment of the friends who I thought were truly there for me is overwhelming.

I am finding that I am pushing myself into doing things like going out with friends and family, trying to do the things I used to be able to do, and just finding it too difficult. Am I doing it because I am scared to death of admitting to myself that I just need to walk away sometimes and work things out on my own without the sensory/stress overload.

Am I truly that terrified? Am I truly that sick? The thought of the potential of permanent isolation and the onslaught of Agoraphobia is just wicked. I'm even terrified of it destroying my marriage.  Long term medical help is just not yet fully available so I'm left with working a majority of this out on my own, yet again, more feeling of isolation!

This is a link to an article called The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino. It was sent to me by a friend who also suffers from several chronic illnesses, who has been an enormous help and her guidance is cherished. It was published on a website for sufferers of "invisible illnesses" called - butyoudontlooksick.com

Hopefully it will help others understand what it is truly like to have to struggle just to be able to function. And what it is like to be close to someone living with chronic illness.

-When I was a little girl just learning how to swim, I was absolutely terrified of jumping off the diving board for that first time- even with my neon orange floaties on. Now, even as an adult, I find myself in the same position, standing at the end of the board gasping with fright and trembling. If I can just summon up the courage to run away to the mountains and be alone and think things thru, work things out, take one small step at a time. Get back to "normal" or maybe find out what my "normal" truly IS!!

The psychologist that I saw briefly in the hospital in October said something to me that still makes my little hairs stand on end. She said to me- after hearing of all the horrible things that I've been thru and how I still manage to be hard on myself, - "Give Your Self Permission".

Another key piece of valuable information she told me is that as a very young child, witnessing my mother dying of cancer, I adapted an intense sense of survival instincts, perhaps too intense. The "trust no one, hit the ground running, don't look back", simple brutal survival mixed with a case of Post Traumatic Stress. It has been growing within me for thirty years like a tumor. It infiltrates EVERY decision and EVERY move I've ever had to make in my life order to "survive".

Time to jump off the end of the damned board, give myself permission to have the big assed tumor removed and live a normal lifestyle, free of fear of what's going to happen to me next.

Time to stop surviving and start living.

 - This is a picture of my father and I jumping off the diving board together into the deep end. My father had just learned how to swim that very summer. He helped get me off the end of the diving board, after being frustrated by hours of waiting for me to jump on my own, by scooping me up onto his shoulders and running me off the board together. The look on my face is priceless!!!