Get Your A$$ in Gear...It's a New Year!

...This is what I've been telling myself all week anyway! I know, I know, it's so stereotypical, so cliche ... But there's just something about the freshness of a new year that makes me want to join in and make a new beginning on many areas of life.


What really inspires me is the fact that all of the hustle and bustle of the holidays has ended. It's more the fact of all that hullabulloo having passed -- and if you have gotten through the season without ever feeling just the slightest bit crazy, depressed, tense, hysterical, etc., then please send me the name of your dealer psychiatrist! -- So yes, it's more the fact that all of that has passed and a new season is upon us.  And yes, yes, sure it's a new year as well.  I don't make resolutions, per se, but as the heading of this particular post suggests, I do begin to feel I need to get in gear, get something in gear anyway! 

Now that the shopping and celebrating, the crying, pushing and shoving, and the merry-making have ended, would it not be a great time to get started on that workout plan?  Finally wean myself from that last little nicotine patch to which I've been clinging for dear life?  Finish my stupid, boring, engaging, mentally-stimulating class finally, after the extensions I've been given to do so?  Yes, it's time to attend to these matters in one way or another.

As my long-time readers know, there is a rather chaotic backstory to all of this.  I mean, approaching the new year and all of the possibilities for renewal or redemption that I see ... it all reveals itself to me in a brand new light, in the new perspective of how my life has totally changed.  The routine, the pace, the focus ... Everything has changed.  I am home now, I do not work, I receive my government check.  Just having come to this place, just having fought (and fought, and fought...) that battle and finally won is cause for me to wake up smiling every single morning.  Even when other things are completely shitty, really, even when I'm sick and in pain and stressed about anything that might be going on ... even when I'm troubled trying to navigate this new way of life ... I am always grateful and feeling so blessed that I have received this gift. 

Unless you know me and have been along for the ride, I don't think you could possibly understand the blessed, sweet relief this has brought to me.  It is truly a shelter from what had become a terrifying, cruel, and brutal storm.  My life had become completely disastrous; all I was ever doing was surviving, and barely that.  Each day was painful, physically and emotionally.  I became more and more stressed by the physical illness, which rendered me unable to perform up to my normal abilities at anything in life.  I sucked at my job when I could even make it there.  I was unable to gather thoughts enough to write, even to write in my pen-and-paper journal, which has always been an outlet and a therapeutic tool for me.  I stopped enjoying any music and did not have time or the presence of mind to find new music.  And then the secondary issues piled on, as one might imagine.  Money became a horrible burden due to the medical bills I was incurring and the inverse proportion that I was able to work (or unable to work, as the case was).  Life was just shit.  I didn't know what to do but to keep shoveling it...

But now!  Now I am here, and I won't go into thanking and blubbering over all of those who helped me get here, but I didn't do it alone.  I have thanked them in person and in other posts and intend to continue sharing my gratitude with them.  So enough mushing for now :)

It is a whole new world for me.  I am just getting started.  I spent the first few months of this time "off" seeing doctors, visiting hospitals, getting tests, trying medications ... But I was able to focus on that, and a good treatment has started to come together.  I have some really bad days still that remind me I have to keep doing what I'm supposed to do to take care of myself, that remind me we are not finished working toward a perfect treatment plan (or as close as we may find).  But I have begun to experience good days too!  Lots of them!  All in a row!  I can't tell you how long it had been in my life since I had two good days in a row, let alone the way life is now. 

When I do feel my best, when I do have those good days, I have been finding myself again.  I have said before that this disorder stole my life during the years I had it at its worst.  It really and truly took the best of me away from the past ten years of my life.  It might not make sense to some, but I know that in many ways I am still only 24 years old.  There are things I don't know about myself yet.  There are thoughts I have not even begun to express or examine.  There are feelings that I could not explore or give myself time to feel because life was just about survival.  And on a more basic level, there are things I plain don't know about ME.  I don't know what I like to do the most with my free time.  Sometimes it occurs to me that I really don't know what kind of hobbies I want to pursue, or what I'm good at, or what I might like to TRY to be good at.  Like ... my dad loves to cook and has always enjoyed doing activities that involved cooking shows and contests and, of course, making stuff, in his free time.  My mom enjoys spending time with her large family and getting any event going that involves socializing with them.  She loves to see movies that are fun, funny, and/or romantic.  She likes to watch "The Bachelor."  She loves children and babies.  And my brother is an expert on comic books and movies of all sorts, the ones you never even heard of as well as the blockbusters.  He likes video games and good music.  He likes to be with friends, socializing.  We love to get together and watch a funny tv show or movie or just be funny together and laugh.

But as for me?  I'm trying to use this time to find out something about myself.  After a decade or more of only being able to react to life, to a painful, chaotic, stressful life, now I want to see what I might do in a different environment.  THAT is why this is such a gift.  I'm not sure what I like to do.  I'm not sure what my favorite music is anymore.  I don't know whether I like to go to the movies anymore.  I don't know what I really like to watch on TV, or if I like it.   One thing I have fallen in love with again is playing sports though!!!  I got my Wii Fit last year, and then I got the Sports Resort, and when I'm feeling energetic (or like I need to get that a$$ in gear), I play that for HOURS some days.  I even do the cheerleading one sometimes (but it's hard!).  When the weather is nice again, maybe I will be outside playing some non-virtual sports again.  Who knows what 2010 will bring?