Here's a little recap of the year 2013. It was a real roller coaster ride. I started out feeling strong and went all the way to Phoenix to run an awesome 10k. That had me all psyched up to start training for my first half marathon. That was going well until I ran too much in worn out shoes, and probably overtrained a little. The result was a stress fracture in my left foot which put me out for about 3 months and cancelled the half marathon as well as Ragnar. I got a little bummed. I had been so uptight really about all my running goals and expectations. Life has a way of checking us though. I finally got back into the swing of things from that and started running again, feeling great and ran the Legacy Midnight Run again, which was the very first race I had ever run the previous year. From there I was planning on another half marathon to make up for the one I missed.
Then life decided to have a hey day with me for awhile. Just about 2 weeks after the race I ran in July, I went in for what you would think to be a rather routine dental surgery. It ended not being routine at all. What should have been the expected level of pain and recovery, turned out to be a nightmare. Pain went from uncomfortable, to bad, to unbearable, to worse. There was an infection and subsequent antibiotics. Then I lost complete control of the left side of my face. I was having all kinds of involuntary muscle movements of my face and neck. This wasn't just a twitch. I joked that I should have joined the circus as a facial contortionist. And it hurt because all my muscles were so tired from moving constantly. I felt so broken. I started having a lot of muscle weakness in my legs and arms, numb hands and feet, hand tremors, severe dizziness and constantly losing my balance, and an inability to even sit up for longer than 10 minutes at a time, and overall mental confusion and dumbness. I had an MRI to find out what the heck was happening to my body. MRI was completely normal. Got clued in that there was probably some connection to my bipolar meds by my general practitioner. There is the risk of developing potentially severe and permanent movement disorders with pretty much all anti-psychotics and other related drugs. Went to the psychiatrist, who decided I had to get off of my anti-psychotic right away. This had always been one of my big fears. Everything had been pretty good for a long time, I thought that was what I would be doing to help me manage the very frightening and disorienting psychotic stuff I deal with. That all changed very quickly and I had no control over it. I was feeling angry, terrified, anxious, discouraged and broken. I literally laid on the couch for a month straight and spent hours just holding my head crying because of the pain I was in. I couldn't eat and lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks. Along with the dizziness I became so nauseated, 24/7. I have never been so nauseated in all my life. 1 month turned into 2 as I started tapering off of Seroquel and I slept for a total of about 20 hours in a 3 week time span, which certainly added to the dizziness, nausea, confusion, and I became a total clutz and complete wreck. I was itching all over from the withdrawal, and it's a deep tissue, fiery kind of itch. If you've never experienced it, don't. It's awful. I was pretty weak and just going for short walks around the block were about all I could handle. Driving was very difficult because of my dizziness and nausea and that I wasn't able to focus or think or remember what I was doing. All these people started telling me about all these things they knew I just had to try. Frankly, I wanted to punch them in the face and tell them to leave me alone because although I know people all want so much to help, sometimes you really don't understand the whole story and why something may not be a good idea or why someone really honestly can't handle doing something in the state they are in. (I think that's something everyone experiences and feels, but no one ever says it, so I just did, and I know I have been guilty of doing the same thing, for which I am very sorry). I tried going to a naturopathic doctor and then had allergic reactions to the herbal things he had me try and just had this bad feeling that it wasn't the right thing, not to mention how much money it was costing for everything. So I gave up on that because emotionally I was having a very difficult time dealing with everything else already and it was just too much. I was trying so hard to be optimistic and have a sense of humor about it all. But I was quickly becoming a real mess. Turns out I had to go off of not only 1 but 2 of my meds at the same time. That put my nerves even more on edge as I realized that sooner or later I would have to start facing some of my psychotic symptoms again. 2 months turned in to 3. I was having a difficult time talking. I just couldn't get any thoughts or words out and what I did manage to get out was very jumbled. I couldn't remember anything. I would get so confused and lost. I couldn't figure out how to do very simple tasks. For an example, I would open up the cupboard to take out a cup and just stand and stare blankly as I couldn't remember, first of all what I was doing, and then because I couldn't figure out what to do to get the cup out of the cupboard. I almost couldn't even find my way to work on a couple of occasions, and I've been working there for 5 or 6 years. I just couldn't think straight at all. It all had me very frightened to be truthful, thinking maybe I have some serious neurological disorder or a brain tumor or something. I was dropping everything and kept falling down the stairs. My legs and arms and hands and brain just didn't want to work anymore. It was so frustrating! Finally at Thanksgiving I was able to run 2 miles and that was awesome. It was short-lived. I never ran again in the year. Throughout September, October, and November combined I ran a total of 3 times. At this same time I started losing it, as in, losing touch with reality. I was getting all psychotic and flipping out, and I came to a realization that I had actually been experiencing psychotic symptoms much more often than I had ever thought. It wasn't very comforting to find out. Basically, my whole life turned to chaos over the course of the year, and that's saying something because I kind of live in chaos as a normal state of affairs anyway. I was still feeling all the feelings of anger, resentment, fear, disappointment, but mostly I was just plain exhausted. My psychiatrist was very concerned about me. In December she started me on a new medication. All the while, over the 6 month course, my son and husband were really suffering and the stress and negative energy in our home skyrocketed from the already intolerable levels we've been living under for the past 10 years. We started the evaluation process to find out if my son Cody has Asperger's during this whole thing, which is still in progress, and a constant worry on my mind.
Right now I am kind of living, well not living really, in a fog from the shock to my system. The entire year was also the culmination of more years than I can count of emotional and mental agony and denial in my marital situation. So while I had all this other stuff raging, I could talk to people about that (for the first time ever), and found so much love and support. But then there is this whole other storm in my life that I haven't been able to say anything about, so I'm holding that all in trying to look nice and pretty, and like I have a good attitude about all the stuff people know is going on. And feeling like I have to keep so many secrets and hold it all together. I have been trying to deal with everything so very much on my own and in silence at home and with my husband, and that has been very difficult and isolating. I have weathered a lot of very difficult years over the past decade with having cancer twice, becoming a completely different person and losing my identity, as the result of the onset of mental illness. Then officially being diagnosed with bipolar and psychosis, and the ensuing storm that has destroyed both my marriage and the person I'm married to because of all these things. Bipolar does that, it's like a hurricane. Going through a near divorce and trying for the past 5 years since then to hold on by a thread and pretend things are ok, only to 5 years later have it all fall apart anyway. And trying, despite everything, to be a good mom, good wife, good daughter, good sister, good friend, good employee, good person, and feeling like a failure at all of them. I would say that I have pretty much been in survival mode for an entire decade, but this year quite nearly did me in. Hooray, that year is finally over. Longest year ever.
So now it's 2014. I'm shell-shocked really, just scrambling around in the dark to find some kind of existence. That is why my resolution for this year (and the next however long it takes), is to take back my life! Which means, this year is not going to be easy at all. I'm actually in for some more really rough waters. But this time it will be because I am making that choice. See, I really am crazy. I do these kinds of things. It really is nuts.
Here's where the running lesson comes in. I am learning that I can face hard, daunting, painful things and survive in the end. I am learning that I have to be willing to do those things to make progress and get to good, fulfilling places. I am learning to allow for moments of weakness, but to power through anyway, without thinking I failed because I am simply being human. I am learning that I can discipline myself, when I feel out of control, to focus my attention on the positive aspect of things, even when there is an overwhelming negative side. I am learning that I can work on tiny little pieces at a time and have confidence that over time, things will come together if I don't stress out over it and I have faith in God and his timing and plan. I am learning that there are amazing, loving, supportive people all around and that I don't have to do it all alone. I have a lot of ground to make up and a lot of things to define, a lot to let go of. And I need to do a lot of healing, which is not always a pleasant process. It comes with ups and downs. It's just a fact. But it doesn't stay the same forever. That's something else I am learning. Things do get better, no matter how impossible that can seem at the time. Sometimes that means things do resolve and actually get better. More often it means that we still have to go through and feel the crap, but we find the strength, support and hope to handle things more calmly, more optimistically, more gratefully.
Nicole is now about a month and a half away from carving up the slopes in Sochi Russia at the Paralympics. Currently she is traveling the world with TeamUSA to a stream of competitions, as the final push before the games. (Just the other day she placed 5th in the entire world!) Yes, she is officially a US Paralympic team member and will be participating in making history as snowboarding appears as a Paralympic event for the first time. And you can watch it happen because this will also be the first time the Paralympic events will be broadcast on mainstream TV. I for one will be going out of my way to watch for Nicole (I don't have TV). And maybe she will even be lucky enough to have her story featured, right on your screen. And I have to admit that I felt very proud when I learned that NBC was contacting people to get photographs and stories of Nicole, to put together a possible clip. Yes, she's that cool, just as this picture shows!
I think this music video of the song On Top of The World by Imagine Dragons says it all really, both in words and in pictures. The details describe the whole grand experience I've been enjoying. Check it out! (Anyone who knows me knows I couldn't be serious if I tried so I always seem to gravitate to videos like this - but be sure to listen to the words too). Thanks for letting me rant. Sometimes all I really need is to get it out.