Warning! This could piss you off. Don’t care.

I’m not looking for a fight and I’m not angry with anyone except people who continually make snarky comments toward what I will call, my group of people! I am so overly happy for people who never have to know what it’s like to live inside a body that has left you hanging in the edge. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Ever. I’m happy you don’t have to wake up and wonder if you can walk the pain away, or if you will be stuck in your bed until a flare passes. I’m happy for you if you can wake up and stretch without worrying your stretch could be too big, and cause an aneurysm in your carotid artery to simultaneously burst from the stretch being too much. I am happy if you can walk for more than fifty feet without needing assistance or doubled over in pain. If you can spend your days where the first thing you acknowledge about your upcoming day isn’t if you will have enough left in you to be able to hold your grandson and read him a book without burning pain in your arms. I’m happy if you can wake up and dream into reality a painting and you didn’t have to lie there remembering that your arms won’t raise your delicate paintbrush to be able to bring it to the canvas and the joy was stolen by a disease you didn’t see coming. My friend, Karla, would love to have one more day like that. If you ask her I bet she can tell you the exact date her life changed and that disease stole that privilege from her. Maybe those of us with autoimmune diseases and vascular diseases are annoying to you. Maybe you see us as whiners or complainers. Maybe you believe that WE are taking your rights by wearing our masks? Maybe just looking at us is too much and it angers you. Whatever it is, stay with me on this. If you have read this far I promise I have a point.

The fact that I have been an open book about my journey with FMD and Fibromyalgia (2 completely separate diseases neither caused by my fatness) I don’t think that I have done my job to educate. Autoimmune diseases cause health compromises that would not affect otherwise healthy people. When we get sick, we get full body sick. Very sick. It’s always big sick and there’s nothing to be done about that. Am I angry about the fact that I have them? No, but I would choose not to if I had the option! I did tell Mike the other day that sometimes I really resent him. Very seldom does he have a really bad day. He has arthritis that he suffers with but not daily. He hops out of bed and talks right away, which always has made me angry in the morning, whistles, smiles, you know, all of the happy annoying things he can do to show his gratitude!! Lol!!

All of this leads me to the insensitivity of the latest subject on my mind. When you post and repost about Covid and your “constitutional rights” or those of us that stay home “not living life “ or “living in fear” I, like other sick people, do take it personally. If living my life or living life staying away from people or wearing masks makes you uncomfortable, how about you stop defining what my life should look like? One more time. Just because the life I have to live looks different than yours doesn’t mean I’m not living or that I’m living in FEAR!! STFU. I haven’t been to the grocery store since last Labor Day. I don’t go to the grocery store after the first flu case arrives until sometime in the summer. I do this because now, if I get pneumonia like flu I can bust these aneurisms and then it’s lights out for Lizzie. While that may seem extreme for YOU, it is MY reality. Does that mean that from Labor Day to now I have lived in FEAR and I’m hiding in a corner of my basement?? Well according to the snotty memes it does. I want to tell you that is unkind. I have lived my life. Some days in bed in so much pain I can’t move, some days just happy to put my face in the sun. Some days I am able to go to work and go the whole day with my Thieves diffusing and my sanitizer. Those are the days I may say hello from a distance, but I’m living. I am wearing my mask, made with love by my other sick friend, because I want to be able to see people and LIVE.

I’m not afraid of death. I would venture to guess that you are way more afraid than I am, because you don’t know what might take you out! I got a pretty good idea what will cause my demise. I have faced the 50/50 odds of dying on the table. I have walked through yet another surgery day before yesterday so that I might live in a little less pain. So, smarty pants, I know the risks. Please stop posting about my “hiding and living in fear”. We all have to get through this. You do you. But don’t make unkind memes about things you really have NEVER experienced. It’s insulting to me that I have to even read them on my feed and most of you would never post those things if you walked a foot in my shoes because you would feel badly for lumping us all in the fraidy cat category. I want more time is all. I want to see my grandkids a bit longer, hold my husbands hand a few more years if God allows. I want to try to feel as “normal “ as I can in this weird time and I don’t want to be pigeonholed because your life looks way better than mine.

I’m tired. I’m going to go tend to another 20 inch midline incision and I am going to text Karla, Barb and Sandra because pain is hard today and They are those people insinuated within those memes too. They wonder if it is pointed at them. My life is worth something to me. Hit the delete please if this pisses you off.

I’m going to hang on until I can hug my people again.

Until then… you can delete your mean memes if it suits you.

E