A Rough Patch

The last week has been really rough for me. I didn’t want to post about it because I don’t want to become some whiny blogger who all too often focuses only on the negative. I was hoping that I could avoid it by avoiding the Internet. But then I realized that I have been exactly what I didn’t want to be- on this blog. Here is a place where I’m allowing myself to wallow- if only just a little bit. Because sometimes we all need to wallow- just a little bit.

There have been a lot of very stressful situations popping up in my life the last week. As much as I want to lay it all out here, I’m not going to. The situations to which I’m referring are very personal and very upsetting to everyone involved. I think it would be unfair to those other people if I laid all their business bare on the Internet. It doesn’t matter how much anonymity I have right now, it could eventually lead back to the people with whom I’m frustrated and angry but love anyway. I don’t think that permanently placing my hurt feelings on the web would be in anyone’s best interests (except maybe those that wish to lose themselves in what’s going on in someone else’s life). Yet, as a blogger, that is exactly my first inclination: “BLOG IT!” My fingers are itching to let everyone in on my own life’s little drama- to share with the world my level of frustration and hurt. My first instinct is to open my browser and tell my side so that maybe I can get a few pats on the back and maybe a “You go, girl!” Support, some people call it. I feel I need to blog it out, so I can get some support from other people that may have been through the same type of personal crisis as the one I’m currently working through. Except that it wouldn’t be private- no matter how few people actually read this blog anymore. I don’t even know if it would be productive for me. What would laying bare my soul really accomplish? Other than let me vent and allow others to see that maybe their own problems are so bad. Or vice versa: Make other people angry because I’m whining about something so trivial when they know what true suffering is.

Recently I’ve taken to reading some blogs wherein the author tells of suffering greater than mine¹. I feel selfish because reading those blogs helps me appreciate what I do have and helps me refocus on those good things. I don’t comment and offer my own support to them, because I’m only reading to help me see my circumstances a little differently. It’s like counting your blessings. Sometimes it’s hard to see what a true blessing is unless someone else shows it to you. Online that’s sometimes through stories of the suffering of strangers. It’s extremely selfish, but sometimes I have no other way to see what is really good in my own life unless…

The last few days I’ve been experiencing one of the worst flares I’ve ever had. It’s, at times, been beyond belief. I couldn’t even bear to wear a bra because the straps felt like they were cutting into my skin. They weren’t, of course, but my body was protesting in such a way I was almost in a panic trying to get it off. The pressure from the shower head was almost more than I could bear and my shoes felt 4 sizes too small. I dare not lean back against the chair I’m sitting in or even lay my arms on the rests. If you’ve ever been in a vehicular accident and came away battered, you may understand the depths of my physical pain. I literally feel like every inch of my body has been thoroughly and violently beaten. It’s more than just feeling a flu-like ache all over (which is a normal sort of pain for me and how the pamphlets tell you to describe it to people) and I really can’t find any relief. And I truly believe it’s so bad because of the stress I’ve been under lately.

Believing that made me want to write about it all- to relieve it somehow. I thought, for a moment, that it would be like group therapy, where I could let all of the negativity just slide off my and give my struggles to someone else. But it’s not really like that, is it? It’s not a “safe” way to deal with your personal problems, no matter what other people might write about. There’s eventually going to be time when the words I write here about the problems I don’t have here will come back to haunt me.

So, instead I’ll whine a little about my physical suffering and about what’s not helping me. In a way I think this can help someone else appreciate their own blessings. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

1. I’m not discussing friends’ blogs here. Just random strangers I’ve happened across for one reason or another [↩]