What's Your Poison

8 sleeps left until my cast comes off. Ah to be free again. As soon as they took that ball of sepsis out of my leg, I felt better. No more toxins racing around my veins reeking havoc upon my innards. My mind has become amazingly sharp lately. Alas not at midnight though. I think I may come back to this entry another time :)

Tired

Tired. So tired. My eyes struggle to focus. The lids are heavy and draw together for that intimate kiss.
Fatigued. So fatigued. My shoulders tighten and yearn my body to be graced by the arms of the horizontal.

The Written Word

I do cherish the time I am allowed to set forth upon the ground. I have even learnt to see the world through a vision too hard to describe and too difficult for most to comprehend. But I exist and have thought, and I have intelligence enough to gather these words and spill forth from pen to paper to keyboard.
For a long time I have only felt acquainted with the spoken word. Delving into its depth only but infrequently as I prefer silence as opposed to silence’s nemesis. The written word has given me a gift of preparation, peace and conclusions drawn far before my hands can deftly construe these dribblings. So I write, and I write, until my wrist and fingers ache.
During my major neurological crash and burn (which one day I will detail in full obscure glory) I lost my ability to read. So strange for a skill instilled almost from birth be washed away without goodbyes or a “I’ll see you soon”. It did leave behind a partial snippet of itself. I was able to read individual words but a whole sentence was out of the question. Comprehension no longer existed in the realm of my mind.
Strangely enough, I could still write. So I wrote. Proof reading was a major difficulty. The words, no matter how long I stared at them, drew no conclusions to being part of literary construction. Still, I had written them, I knew they were real. Day after day I would write and reread. It was like being reborn into childhood. Eventually, I regained my lost friend, reading.

The Waterfalls

Reality slips away like waterfall. It reaches the edge of that ever approaching cliff promising the great fall before finding solid ground again.
The numbness begins. It starts at the toes and inch by inch crawls up giving way to a new sense of gravity. The weight of the world buckles at the knees and the cruel hardness of the earth’s face kisses them.
Over the water goes.
There is a fuzziness in the air. Once thin, becomes thick and unbearable to behold. The sight of the eyes swim through the fog trying to grasp the familiar, trying to hold on to what is actually in existence. The numbness has spread. It engulfs the whole being. In its wake lies ever forming rigidity. This new tightness obscures the muscles where once they were fluid, are now turned to stone.
The water crashes to the pool below.
Each touch, each whisper in the air electrifies the skin. The sensation left repeatably stabs at the same spot.
Torture.
The lines of the world swim. They swirl and tumble like a dancer of delirium. Never static. Shadows grow without an object to cast them. Lights appear without an illuminating source.
Something breaks.
The fall and the landing gives way to ripples of calmness over the body.
I can breath deep again.

Nursery Rhymes

There once was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was horrid.
I can’t forget the sound of my own voice echoing out, “I’m not a little girl, I don’t have a little curl.” Of course, only being but a young child, I didn’t realise that my innocent and stubborn defiance was more like a chant warding off a cruel curse. My mum could never have known that her playful descriptions of the soft kiss curls that framed my face could yield such a devastating metaphor that was to come.
The light hearted childhood rhyme may convey a story about a moody and untameable child, but to me dictates the struggle underfoot through my life. When I am good, no power on this earth can stop me. However, the horrid, oh the horrid that can be so blissfully put to the far reaches of my mind can come crashing back. The horrid comes like the simple exhale venturing forth to extinguish my candle. I am left wretched and bruised. Void of light except for a glowing ember and the smoke curling away from a flame once bright.
The fear that rocks me the most is that of the untameable, the unimaginable and the chronic. I have become accustomed to that once unnameable foe, but fear can never be completely vanquished. Having a poor memory does help quell it some, but the fragments bringing forth tormenting snippets still remains. However horrid these pieces of me, I don’t think I would change if I was lucky enough to be offered the choice. Even if some divine being were to present itself to me in this very moment and push the proverbial reset button, I would not abide. For who I am has been devised and crafted this way, through many trials and tribulations of the soul. Thus, on the back of fear what rides closely is the strength in who I am.

To Begin is the Hardest Step

Writing about one’s self is probably the most self indulgent thing that anybody can do. First of all, one needs time. Time to think, prepare, reflect on past experiences and then, ultimately time to write. Secondly, one need’s the gut determination to finish the wordy journey and coming out the other end reasonably unscathed. People who write about their lives always have something inspiring to share with the world. It is usually some tragic tale where, in the end, their self determination proves everyone wrong and they triumph. Maybe that is why I am writing this story. I want to feel that I will come out on top. I guess that my story is about overcoming me, Emma. Now I haven’t seen the hardest of times or picked the last proverbial straw or even scrapped the bottom of the barrel with the barrel actually being life. I believe that we are all dealt our own individual problems given to us from the universe. Some have it worse than others. But I also believe that we can only learn by taking the problem and owning it and sharing what we have learnt so that someone else my have a less rocky road to travel. Yes, this is what I shall do here. I will tell you my story so that you will learn and hopefully be inspired to share your tale in your own way.

So I bet by now you are wondering what has been forced upon my life that warrants a blog? Well, I have been living with a condition that has only finally been diagnosed. I have lived with multiple symptoms that have known to confuse both doctors and myself. I do not know if the diagnosis is the definite cause of all my symptoms. What is certain, for sure, is that I have survived through chronic joint and muscle pain spiced with seizure like activity and topped off with obscured eyesight that is apparently due to my sensitive brain and a plethora of other complaints. Oh, and memory loss, always the last thing I remember to tell people!

One thing I have found by being a connoisseur of “Cybercondriac-ism” is that apart from researching different disease/syndromes information, the best nuggets of hope came from stories of patients. It was wonderful being able to relate to stories told online and even help participate in someone else’s struggle through the world of the disruptive anatomical unknown. There are never enough personal stories out there detailing what they really went through. So maybe this is why I am writing late at night, high on coffee and restless legs. I will take you through my life from my very first belly pain to the halo outlining everything I can see even as I type these words.