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Fear

by 2 Comments
Jan
27
2012
Fear Jeannette Guest Writer

I had an incredible dream early this morning. My dreams are typically interesting, vivid and in color but on a rare occasion I’ll experience a dream that I know I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. This particular dream was about fear. I wasn’t running from monsters, death or pain but instead I dreamt of fear as if it was an actual tangible being. This particular dream began in black and white, and with a great sense of urgency. I was forced to leave a dear friend. I promised her that I’d return, but she was paralyzed with fear that I’d never come back. Time passed and I returned as promised. I opened the door of her home and found her slumped over in a corner with her face to the wall. The room had become infested with fear. The walls were like catacombs and porous. Fear had embedded itself into each chamber and had grown into the walls. Each cavity contained an amebic shaped being with a haunted face that moaned and wailed. This thing had become part of the … [Read more...]

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Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

by 10 Comments
Nov
11
2011
My senior photo from last year.

I have heard a lot of comments throughout my 19 years of living with a Congenital Heart Defect and life threatening lung disease called Pulmonary Hypertension. Many of which have had to do with my scar or the way my voice sounds. A few times in elementary and middle school; kids would tell me how they wished they had a heart defect so they could get out of participating in P.E. When I was younger, I knew they weren’t trying to be mean or anything and that they just didn’t know any better. They didn’t know how it felt to sit on the side lines and watch as your friends ran back and forth and how you wished so much you could run just like them without getting tired. They didn’t know what it felt like to be the “cheerleader” for the team when you so badly wanted to be on the field with them. That was when I was 11 to about 13 years old that I got those comments. So going into college, I thought since P.E. wasn’t mandatory; I wouldn’t get any comments about me sitting out of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Heart Disease, Living Life Tagged With: , ,

“Hope” by John

by 7 Comments
Sep
03
2011
John Hope

I had a strained relationship with hope before my wife was diagnosed with cancer. To me, hope was a high waiting for a low, a fix with a nasty flipside. Far from the precious entity exalted by legions of poets and philosophers, hope was just another coordinate on the pain/pleasure cycle existing in infinite balance with its opposite. In the same way that happiness alternates with sadness, or desire with loss, hope alternates with fear. One requires that the other exist. Hope was for suckers, and I was no sucker. Or so I reasoned. The times I didn’t need hope, that is. But when life would clobber me over the head with misfortune, there I was, clinging to hope like a dear, misunderstood friend. Since my wife’s diagnosis, however, my relationship with hope is no longer strained. It’s been severed completely. I’ve abandoned hope, and in the process have met a new friend: peace. To abandon hope is to trample the plotline of feel-good movies, to renounce the rhetoric of … [Read more...]

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Keep The Light In Your Life, Despite Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS

by 19 Comments
Jun
29
2011
hydrangeas

When you first get hit with Fibromyalgia and/or ME/CFS, it seems like your entire life is being brutally robbed.  Sometimes a vast amount of it is stolen. I mean, I've managed to lose the ability to work, the ability to smell, the ability to drive, and the ability to stay awake for more than 5 hours in a row! But for all we lose, we also gain the ability to find other reasons to enjoy existence.  I've started to enjoy fashion and interior decorating, as well as blogging and coloring.  I'd love to be able to garden, but I haven't quite figured out a body-friendly way to accomplish it. I have been aiming to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, which gives me a sense of peace and joy, as I love the country.  I love to watch films, read or listen to books, and flip through magazines (when my hands or brain aren't giving me too much trouble!). The most important thing that I have done since becoming ill is putting my experiences on the front line for everyone to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: CFS, Fibromyalgia, Living Life, Loving Life

When A Loved One Is Addicted

by 2 Comments
Mar
31
2011
Addiction

When someone you care about uses drugs—and this includes excessive alcohol use—it can wreak havoc in your relationship and in your life. After all, if you care about this person, you are enmeshed with him or her mentally and emotionally. You may be physically bonded through blood, marriage or living together, and your finances may be entangled with this person’s as well. What is more, if someone close to you is using, any negative repercussions he or she experiences cannot help but resonate in your life too. Addiction is defined by experts as any behavior that a person keeps repeating in spite of strong negative consequences. It doesn’t matter if the substance is not considered addictive in the classic sense (the classic sense being the person suffers intense physical withdrawal symptoms if he or she doesn’t ingest the substance). If the person keeps using a substance in spite of negative consequences, he or she is in the thrall of an addiction. A simple example is a … [Read more...]

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