Party in a box

“I remember you! You used to come in and get slammed with a couple of your co-workers”. Yes, that’s what I heard yesterday when I sent the text that I had started a blog. A nice young guy I met almost 2 years ago that used to wait on us at one of our favorite restaurants. He had given me his number so we could meet up at Amsterdam sometime and I forgot it was in my phone. After much explaining of who I was and why he received a text from me, that was his reply… Wow. Not a good way to be remembered.

I used to relish in the fact that I was known by many as a “party in a box”. That’s what my old doctor said upon our first meeting. “You’re just a party in a box”. It became an ongoing joke, a label that I carried around with me for years with pride, as if I did something spectacular to deserve it.. as if it was an achievement. I now see it was not.

I do miss being the life of the party, I must say. I miss having the energy to go out with friends, anytime, no matter what. I get so frustrated having to plan my life by how much energy I have. “Gee, no Bro, I can’t get together with you on Sunday because I have a huge meeting Monday, and I will be exhausted.”. “I’m sorry we can’t hang out Saturday, I had such a stressful week I’m wiped out and if I don’t rest, I’ll go into the next getting sick”. It sucks. It truly does.

I actually want to write about what I’ve been through and learned with Lyme. It’s changed me forever. Some of it good, some bad. Nonetheless, huge changes. There are so many different aspects to how this disease has changed my life to write about it at once, well that would be a novel. For today I wanted to comment on a realization that came to me not long ago and I think of daily, especially when someone remembers me as ‘the girl that used to come in and get slammed.’ (No B, that did not offend me at all! It made me laugh, and kind of sad, so don’t think I took offense to the comment, it just made me think.)


You know what I’ve decided is not a good mix?

Depression, followed by meds, then a freak stingray puncture (most pain I’ve ever felt in my life!!) leading to very high cortisol levels for weeks from the trauma, thus crashing the adrenals, which lead to exhaustion and weakened immune system which the doctor thinks is due to EBV, in which he bases a prescription of Provigil which helps with energy, yet exhausted adrenals cause low thyroid which lead to weight gain, which causes one vain woman to seek out a diet doctor who prescribes diet pills, that work fantastically by the way, so now the tired, chubby woman is becoming thin again, with energy coming from 3 uppers, so she’s a full party in a box! Goes out all the time, is getting slim and sexy again, can drink anyone under the table (or so she thought, never realizing how often she made a fool of herself and how lucky she was that her friends loved her anyhow). She’s now rarely sleeping, she’s up late, having fun, working 70 hours a week, traveling twice a month.. Wow, life is great!! Well, guess what friends? The body just can’t handle that abuse. Nope. It certainly can’t. So now that I’m burning the candle from ALL ends, my immune system and my body say “Enough. I’m sick of how your abusing me and taking me for granted and you’ve pushed me as far as I can go. I’m done.”. That little tick bite (I’ve had many) filled with that lovely Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that my body had most likely lived with and fought to keep at bay for so many years, well, with an exhausted body and weakened immune system the body just couldn’t fight anymore. So the little Lyme won. At least for a while.

It’s taken me so long to fully grasp how my life was tearing me down, and at the point I started realizing it, I was so sick and so low there was nothing I could do but lie in bed and think about it. How did it happen? Why me? What caused it? After over a year of illness and soul searching and days in bed, and lost contact with friends I’m finally starting to realize that my body will never be ever to heal itself if I don’t heal ME. The mind and the body are truly amazing gifts that we should never take for granted. They may not ALWAYS be there for us. I’ve learned that the hard way.

So, today’s lesson in recap, NEVER mix the following:

1) Depression and anti-depressants
2) Stingrays
3) Prescriptions for ‘energy’
4) Prescription diet pills
5) Too much alcohol
6) Too little rest
7) Lack for respect for ourselves and our bodies

It’s a hard lesson, but keep that one in mind kids. You won’t regret it.

and then it began....

So here I am. My first blog. Sharing my thoughts and my life with the world (okay, so the few that luck upon my site and start reading it!). Where does one even begin? What should I write about first? What would you like to read? How much of myself do I share on a public website? Those are questions I do not have the answers for. In fact, I don’t have a lot of answers right now. So beginning this blog will be for me. To put my thoughts into words in hopes that I will gain more knowledge from them. To open pathways to places I may not have considered without taking the time to ponder. Of course I hope that some of what I have to say finds its way to likeminded souls who can enjoy, learn from or just relate but I shall start with this….

I am on a quest to live freely. Without constraints of time or corporate dictation. I am a free spirit whose soul sometimes feels it’s going to burst if I do not get out and see the world. Take it all in. Enjoy the sights, the smells, the little things that life has to offer that in the end are the very things that have fulfilled us. I no longer want to sit and dream about freedom and living life to the fullest. I want to DO. I have not figured out how I am going to make this journey happen, but I have figured out that I MUST make this journey happen. I feel my soul is slowly dying inside from the stifled corporate, possession driven world I have spent so many years living in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that per say. I spent years working very hard and living a very good life in the process. Yet there’s always been this emptiness. This longing, I could not figure out. I spent years trying to figure it out. Thinking I needed to go back to school, perhaps it was my marriage, perhaps it was being single and lonely, perhaps I was simply depressed. I now see that what I’ve been longing so much for was not ‘something’ in my life, but a new path. Freedom.

During this journey I want to share with you my ups and downs. The triumphs and struggles I’ve known in my life that led me to where I am now. The deep, soulful love I shared with my husband. The pride of going from a poor child in North Carolina growing up in a trailer, to the Manager of an Investment firm with a beautiful house in Scottsdale. The loneness and pain that is felt in your bones when you make a choice in life that you weren’t ready to make and spend years trying to come to terms with those choices and the pain they have caused. The true deep love that I’ve shared with my 11 year old Jack Russell Terrier, Riley that has changed me forever. What it’s like to be the social butterfly with all the life, zest and energy anyone could imagine only to become almost bed bound for a year while struggling with Lyme disease. And what it’s like to slowly re-gain your health and come to the realization that life is too short. There are too many wonderful things to experience in this world to sit on the sidelines hoping for “someday” or that winning lottery ticket, or whatever vessel you may have conjured up to get you out of where you are.

I’m tired of waiting for someday. Or for the winning lottery ticket, not to mention it’s quite difficult to win when you don’t play, isn’t that what they say? (By the way, who are THEY?... I’m tired of living life by what THEY say. I don’t even know who THEY are! When did THEY rule our world? Decide what is silly, or ridiculous, or immature, or unacceptable? I think I’m boycotting THEM. This is my life, it’s my dream. And this, is what I have to say. Holoholo wale...