I have been gone rather a long time haven't I? What started as a physical problem with our boiler being broken went on to become a bit of a mental melt down. Being cold all the time for several weeks did not help my pain levels or my sanity.
I don't normally talk about my health problems a lot on this blog, because this is a space where I get to talk about pretty things and I don't really want to share the day to day grind of being in constant pain with the whole world. However in this instance I want to talk about it.
On the whole I deal pretty well with my physical limitations. I accept that I can't do all the things I want to do, when I want to do them, or how. I accept that I am not going to magically get better any time soon. I accept that some days all I will want to do is lie on the sofa whimpering - but sometimes I want to rail at the universe waiving my fist crying "why me?" in a dramatic fashion.
One thing I learnt early on with dealing with having endo is that I won't be ok all the time. I can't hope for that, it isn't realistic to expect to handle pain in a positive way all the time. I have come to accept that every 18-24 months I will have a bit of mental meltdown where I weep and wail and bemoan my fate. When it is hard to motivate myself, and I watch far too much tv and read escapist fiction (more than usual) and generally avoid thinking too hard about my life. Then I stop, reassess and pick myself up again, and start taking steps towards being positive about my life again. I don't like being down and pitiful but I know that it is a normal state of affairs when you are physically limited and have so little control over what you are capable of doing.
I wanted to talk about it here because sometimes I skate over my physical problems (despite the name of my blog) and I may seem to be reasonably happy and cheerful most of the time. The thing is, having endometriosis is not pretty, it is by turns upsetting, painful, exhausting and messy. Don't think because I don't talk about my problems on my blog that I don't have any. I wouldn't want to give a false impression about what life is like with a disability. It is really really hard. So if you know anyone who has an illness or disability don't think for one minute that the smile they are giving you is the full story. Yes, they are pleased to see you and are happy to be distracted from whatever pain they are in. But if they are anything like me, they will probably pay a price, be it physical or mental, for forgetting for a while about what hurts. So don't forget that you will never the know the full story, because you can never understand exactly how hard it was to get out of bed this morning. We don't want your pity, but we do need your understanding if we sometimes seem cranky even if you can't see a reason for it, especially if you don't normally get to see the full picture. Its just life getting the better of us for a while.
So now I have got over my biannual meltdown I have picked myself up and started to create again. I didn't stop crafting while I was gone, I just slowed down quite a lot. So over this week I should have some things to show you, I bet you didn't even notice I was gone did you and all this self justification is wildly misplaced on a craft blog. Normal service will be resumed shortly (I promise).
