Journal 11-7-03

11/7/03

Dear Omni,

I am decided today that I should have made more of an effort to write a journal as things were happening. Why? Well today simply because I feel so emotional that I don’t know as I could go back and relive the previous emotions as well. The good thing about the computer is that I can easily add bits and parts and pieces wherever they fit in or I want to place them.

I become more and more emotional as the days go by. At first I justifiably blamed it on the surgery and the events that had come to pass. Then on being tired from not sleeping well. The emotional piece would come and go. But really since the beginning of this my coping mechanisms are being put through the tests and my emotional stamina through the wringer. I know that because my composure has been challenged and lost several times by relatively small changes in what my expectations are/were of things to come. In the last week, it is blatantly apparent to me that I am no longer coping well at all. There is only a thin film of coping and logic between the world and my emotions - mind you these are raw emotions, ready tears and instant frustration and inability to cope. I am standing right on the edge a cliff and frequently want to just hide or sleep or be numb and unaware. I don’t do those things but they sound more appealing to me this week than last and that concerns me a bit. The bottom line for me of coping is just to take the next step, do the next thing required. I am still doing that but am sometimes going kicking and screaming. It is different for me to have so much emotion up and front and a little tiny logic voice somewhere out in the distance. Something else that’s hard is that the emotions are so up front that I am crying often, about many things, at the drop of a hat, in all kinds of situations and in front of whoever happens to be there at the time. This results in an awful lot of effort going in to control and what’s left is sucked up by the emotion. Not a whole lot of energy left for rationalization, but it’s still there. Just keeps getting kicked aside. Yeah - that’s a good word for it. I feel kicked and beaten up and assaulted. And I just want it all to go away and let me go into a safe cocoon and regenerate and heal and be pain and fear and worry free. Hmmm. Nice day dream that is. Not particularly new to me since also struggling with RA. That adds a lot to my overall sense of being overwhelmed. Dealing with these physical problems that are limiting has worn me down. No one can tell me why they happened or even exactly how. No one can say what I could have done differently to avoid them, or what I can do now to limit them or to prevent them. I am at the mercy of my un-understood body. I know that there are good things happening. I know I am not going to die right now. I know I don’t have cancer right now. I know that there are things I can do to promote better health. I also feel a responsibility to understand what’s happening and to make good decisions. That has been stressful because I didn’t start with a base of knowledge. How little I really know about my body. So I learn as best I can about the next thing coming up and then it changes. BIG GIANT SIGH here. This throws me for a terrible loop because what I was clinging to cope is suddenly gone and I have to start all over because I prepared myself for the wrong thing. I don’t like this anymore. It’s happened to often lately.

This whole experience - I can’t imagine ever going back and being the same as I was before. This new stuff I’ve experienced - I believe it has a purpose. I don’t know what the purpose is, but I do believe there is one. I was thinking this morning about how I really should have be writing the journal for this so I can look back and say - “Hey - see what you’re capable of dealing with and going through?” Part of me asks if this really is as big a deal as it feels like. People go through these things everyday. Millions of women have hysterectomies. Millions of people are diagnosed with cancer. Millions of people die. And millions survive and go on about their business. Brings it all back to what’s the point of it all? So what purpose is there for me in this experience. I cannot be the only person who’s had the same fears come up: of not understanding a procedure, not knowing who to ask or even what to ask, or not having enough information to make a good decision - or having contradictory information and having to make a decision. Blah. And the fact of the matter is that how I feel about it is really pretty irrelevant. Or should say - the fact that I’m tired and raw emotionally isn’t going to stop anything going on. I still have to listen to the logical voice, and use my coping strategies, and put one foot in front of the other in order to get to the other side.