Challenges

Everyone has challenges, mine are just unique to me. 

They tell me it’s not progressive. Nor is it a death sentence, although there are times I feel like it could be.

I have a complicated body. But don’t we all? 

My gaze flickers across the unkept yard. It’s hard not to feel like I’m years behind as I look at the ruins of my life. The consequences of believing I could do more than I am capable of lie scattered before me.

The remains of dreams I could not nurture from fantasy to reality are dispersed about my home and land. There’s a shell of a bed-and-breakfast, too damaged from the elements to host a guest. A horse trailer, now covered in a thick layer of plush moss, sits waiting in the driveway while rust gnaws on its aging bones. Half-written books, dry from neglect, fill my cluttered writing spaces with their stale words. 

Cleaning up this life feels like an impossible undertaking. Finding a way to finish my projects will be a herculean task. 
Giving up would be easier. I have often flirted with the idea, but a deep desire drives me through the fog and pushes me from the darkest places of my mind. It insists we move forward despite the difficulties and the challenges of it all. 

Even though life feels unfeasible most days, I know it’s not too late to pick up the broken pieces of these dreams. I seem to have a knack for making the impossible possible. There is a magic in persistence, even the persistence of a tired woman with chronic health problems. 
When we think about fibromyalgia, it’s often pain that comes to mind. Sure, the pain has its own special kind of hell, but it’s haunted me since childhood. We grew up together. We have a relationship. 

Fatigue is another demon altogether. 

Seven years of bitter, soul-crushing fatigue had me feeling like a prisoner in my own body. It was difficult to build a relationship with something holding me captive, but it was the only way to escape. 

At the moment, I am out on good behavior. Although recent events have the heavy hand of fatigue reaching for me once again. 

You would think the promise of freedom would be enough to keep me in line, but the temptation of a full life is more than I can handle. I want it all. Hungry for a full life, the fragile relationship with fatigue tests my patience every day. Eager to do more, I tell myself, “I won’t get caught this time,” and push a little harder. 

It’s a dangerous game, flirting with this dynamic lifestyle, but I take my chances. Recognizing that every choice I make is a step towards recovering the dreams that lay in pieces before me, or finding myself back in the stew of depression. 

Recovering the life I lost has become an obsession. All I need to do is pick the pieces, but where do I start? How do I maintain a peaceful relationship with fatigue when every monumental mess is tangled in a web of history and coated in a fine dust of guilt? 

My life is my responsibility. Guilt serves no purpose here. I chose to keep the broken pieces, and now I am choosing to put them back together. The guilt lifts with the shift in my mindset and I feel the fatigue quietly receding. No energy shall be wasted on that which is out of my control. The terms of the fatigue agreement have been met for now.

One word at a time, I mend the fabric of my ambitions, stitching together the bedrock of these tattered dreams. They are the magic I weave into this life, the place where I find tranquility in the despair. With the right words, anything can feel possible, even the tasks that lay before me. 

I sift through the rubble of old projects and decide what I truly want from this life, and discard the rest. After taking care of myself, there is little energy left to care for anything else. I must choose wisely. Every ambition requires a conversation with fatigue. We work together or I don’t work at all. That is a part of our terms. These are my challenges. They are unique to me.