Those goals I set to start in January? Smashed them. If smashed can mean completely failed at most of them. I have reasons but no matter how valid those reasons are, I feel like a failure. Much of this ‘funk’ is stemming from my eyes. Both are bad. I’ve had a constant aching with both eyes, that headache-like pain that can only go away after the steroid capsules have been implanted. Pushing four weeks with that now, the eye ache. I’m looking through what appears to be a bubble of distortion with my good eye and it’s annoying.
It also makes me light-headed, often.
The steroid injections will fix it but there’s that all too familiar voice in the back of my head that asks, ‘What if your doc decides he doesn’t want to give you the shots? What then? What if he decides this fight for your sight isn’t worth fighting anymore? What then?’ I hate that voice, those thoughts, and I know it’s just paranoia. Panic. It comes part and parcel with my eye disease, for me at least. And it makes me feel like … like failure because I can’t stay positive all the time.
I try. I know I have so much to be thankful for and I think about it every day. Still, I’m down and sometimes I’d rather wallow and cry than count my blessings. And when I feel that down I don’t want to do a few miles on my exercise bike. Or do chores. Or even play games, a favorite hobby of mine. I’ve thought about shutting my blogs down and tell myself no one would miss them. Then I hear that phrase, ‘This too shall pass’ (in Gandalf’s voice no less!) and I tell myself to shut up.
It’s a vicious cycle, really,
It’s fear. Fear of the unknown. My immune system is attacking my eye sight and it’s not an easy thing to fight. It’s unpredictable and seems to do whatever it wants. Terrifying. Growing up I didn’t feel safe. That’s neither here nor there really but I bring it up to say this. I thought I knew fear. I grew up with a violent and unpredictable man who used fear to rule us. My youngest son, when he was three weeks old had a case of meningitis so bad they, at first, told us he wouldn’t live through the night. That’s a fear I still can’t put into words 22 years later. I once got a call at 1AM from one of the big bosses at my husband’s work telling me he’d been in an accident and I needed to get to the hospital. His partner had fallen asleep while driving and flipped the semi. That was paralyzing fear and I hope I never feel it again.
This, though, it’s different. I really don’t think comparing losing my sight to losing my son or husband is fair because those were, wow, I don’t even know how to phrase it. This is just different. It’s a fear I’ve never felt before and I still don’t know what to do with it. I’m coming up on three years in treatment, you’d think by now I’d have a good handle on this. But I don’t. Not when my eye disease rears back up.
I know that if I’d just pick up my goal list and do them, daily, marking them off with a check every single time as I complete them, I’d feel better. I’d feel in control of something and feel that I was accomplishing. Instead I make excuses or tell myself I’ll get to it later. Later comes and I go sit and watch TV or find something else to occupy me so I can ignore my list. I did clean up the living room before sitting down to type this but I must cop to not having touched it for three days. THREE DAYS of Boo scattering her toys every where. OH. MY. GHOD.
My back is feeling better, just twinges of dull ache every now and then. No reason I can’t start using my bike again. I meant to spend a bit of time with it yesterday but never got around to it. Uninspired, in a funk and allowing it to get worse by choosing not to do what I know will help break it. My excuse yesterday was lack of uninterrupted sleep. My boys have called me in the middle of my sleep the last couple of nights and it’s been hard to go back to sleep. Couple of nights ago one called two hours after I went to bed. Never could get back to sleep … was a ZOMBIE the rest of the day!
See, I do have excuses and, they’re valid. But I’m choosing to use those excuses like a crutch and that makes me feel like failure. I have to stop doing that.