I love February; unlike most of the rest of the world, my personal new year has always started then. Plus, it means I’ve survived January, although happily this year was not that bad.

I’m also happy for you, my dear readers, because my emotions lighten up and my sense of humor starts to come back. So I feel less need to inflict my Angsty Emo self on you in every post. Which is not to say that things are not still hard. Today, for example, basically my entire body except for like, my left earlobe, is on fire at the level of pain that makes it difficult to breathe.

But, in the annoyingly consistent principle of Both/And, I have a happy thing to share as well.

I have spent the past couple of weeks in agonizing pain.

AND

Over those same couple of weeks I have decluttered  the entire guest room! The Room of Doom! The room where for years I’ve dumped everything I didn’t want to deal with (of which there were MOUNTAINS).

So now this:

Looks like this:

Plus Mr. Cranky Fibro Girl and I went to dinner with real, live, in-person people, AND THERE WERE CUPCAKES. Containing three separate forms of chocolate.

AND

I had happy things to write about in a blog post.

AND

I have to go lie down now with some serious pain medication, because: agony.

Once again, I am the Queen of Contrast (but happily for everyone, and 80%-less emo one).

 

You know how sometimes you feel ground down to the barest possible nub of yourself due to spending the past 75,000 days in a row in a fibro flare-up, but you drag yourself to physical therapy anyway to be proactive in taking responsibility for managing your health, only to have your therapist gently inform you that, according to the surveys you’ve periodically filled out to assess your progress, you’re actually doing worse than you were when you started 3 months ago?

So you go home and decide to declutter a little bit more of the guest room and then put the meat on to marinate for dinner so you can experience some feelings of accomplishment? And then your husband calls while you’re in the kitchen so you’re bragging to him about what you’ve done so far today, but then you smell something really odd, whip around, and then yell, “I have to call you back!”?

Which you do, after a couple of minutes and a flurry of activity, and your reassurance that everything is now OK takes the form of statements like, “Don’t worry-it was only a small fire.”?

Yeah. Me too.

 

I’ve been decluttering a lot lately, and I happened upon a few of my earliest pieces as a writer-probably circa 1983.

For various and sundry reasons, August has always been a difficult month for me.

I am SO OVER summer in the South. I am tired of being hot and sweaty all the time. I am impatient with this transition time between seasons, and I want fall to be here RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!

I feel ghostly emotional echoes of that weird limbo time between the end of summer vacation and the beginning of school, where you’re mourning the end of the one, and (if you were me at least), impatiently awaiting the beginning of the other.

I am bored of EVERYTHING: my books, my TV shows, my blog, my hobbies, my ideas, my thoughts, my house, my chores, my errands, my lawn, my To Do list, my body, my meal ideas, my clothes, gravity, the need to stop and eat food, and the fact that I am required to breathe air in order to live. Pretty much every single atom that makes up my physical, mental, and emotional existence I declare to be stupid, dumb, boring, yucky, and poopy.

Basically, I just throw a giant temper tantrum.

This one is a bit better than meltdowns I’ve had in the past. I haven’t swept through the house, dramatically declaring that I am a talentless, unoriginal hack who couldn’t write a good sentence if my life depended on it, and who will clearly never have another good story idea, ever again, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!, and therefore I have no choice but to erase every trace of my blog off the face of the digital earth.

I haven’t had bad mood swings or manic-depressive episodes, thanks to good medications and recent, healthy changes in my diet.

But I am just pretty much sick of everything.

I was talking about this with Lynne last week during our session, and she said, “So it sounds like you’re just feeling kind of fussy,” and then we were both hit with the realization that, oh, I was obviously suffering from Fucking Fussy August Syndrome, or FFAS, for short. (Clearly, our pioneering discoveries in personal growth research know no bounds.)

Just recognizing that I am weary, and worn-down from pain, and tired of my full-time job of managing a chronic illness, and sick of all the million and one things that we all have to do to keep our daily lives functioning, has brought some relief. As has just letting myself feel fussy (but not so much that it runs me).

So I’ve decided to give myself this month off. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like, but just giving myself permission to let go of things if I need to has quieted some of the inner yelling.

I may or may not feel inspired to write, so in case I don’t I’ve decided to re-run some of the posts from the early years of the blog. I hope you enjoy them.

Here’s to some less fussy times ahead.

 

 

(From a recent session with Lynne.)

Lynne: So how have you been doing this week?

Me: Well, you know how when you were little you’d have a bruise, and you’d keep pushing on it, and then you’d go to your mom and say, “It hurts when I do this,” and she’d say, “Well, then stop doing that”?

Lynne: Um, no?

Me: Never mind.

I just found out that Cranky Fibro Girl was named one of the Best Fibromyalgia Blogs of 2014 by Healthline.com!

Of course without you, my wonderful readers, none of this would be possible; I’d just be some random, goofy girl talking to herself in cyberspace 🙂

Thank you so much for the community you’ve helped me create here over the years.

Healthline