Anniversaries and celebrating how far you've come!

 I always acknowledge my anniversary of my accident, celebrate it even. I know this is hard for some to understand, but i think everyone should have at least one day a year where they look at where they are: where they came from and where they want to be. New Year also works well, birthdays have their own issues! This is how i keep focussed in what i want out of a life i just happen to share with Pain. I was a little overwhelmed by the response from my friends and family - people who have travelled at least some of the journey with me. Some of those people didn't know, which is a good thing. It means that i am living a life worth living. That i am not just KJane in Pane; disabled KJane; helpless, suffering, tortured KJane in Pain. I am KJane the dancer, the artist, the traveller! LIVING... An annoying Pain patient who exceeds expectations; who is extremely hard on herself, suffers no fools, no matter where, or who, they are! I like who i have become, with all my eccentricities and faults. I trust in my own emotional strength to overcome adversity. Everything has a solution if you work hard and think outside the box. This hard perfectionist has learned to embrace imperfection! 

Pondering Powerlessness: Saving myself again...

Breakthroughs happen when you least expect it. I certainly wasn't. Especially while I have been feeling so low. Pain has been interfering with my sleep for quite a few months now, medications have been ineffective and sleep deprivation sends me insane. Too many long nights without sleep gave me a lot of time to think while listening to my Pain tunes: the playlist of music which gives expression to my pain experience. They are complex enough to focus on, rather than my Pain. There are also pieces in the mix that just give sound to sensation. I had been losing the battle, wondering if this was the natural declining progression of the CRPS. I was feeling powerless again; overwhelmed, anti-social and withdrawn. The virtual world on the interweb was just as scary, if not more so, than real life. The feeling of being judged by the faceless was more frightening than people on the street. All because of a few uneducated, stupid comments from people who should know better. I was becoming the victim again- I was letting the CRPS win. 

Something clicked a few days ago. This wasn't me. I don't give up the fight, why was I letting it win now? Depression didn't win; spreading CRPS hasn't stopped me; how many things have I overcome and won over? Why was I giving into this and losing my will to live? Why was I buying into the dumb things that were said some time ago, by people for whom I have no respect and whose opinion I do not value? Why should I have listened to that? Being told that I pushed myself too hard, that I was too perfectionist. No, I pushed myself enough to get somewhere, to function. I had high goals, but I also had a habit of achieving my goals. But what affected me so much that I nearly fell apart, was being treated as less of a person because I was disabled. "Handicapped" was their word. What is worse, I nearly bought into that bullshit too.