The Grays

Published on by Mary Gelpi3 Comments
The Grays: As in, A Case of ‘The Grays’ is an amorphous cousin of The Blues, less concrete and more insidious. Where The Blues are a despondency with traceable roots, a break-up say, the source of The Grays is less clear, confusing the host and lengthening the distance he feels between himself and the world around him. It’s a removal of sorts. It doesn’t make everything feel bad as much as it makes everything feel the same–it removes ‘specialness’ casting all things in the same ordinary light. It becomes hard to see yourself clearly, to feel what direction you should go in. A person with The Grays can’t point to a particular occurrence and say Aha! This is the source of my sunless nature! All he can say is that a colorless film has covered his eyes, rendering all choices, all feelings, all consequences the same. It makes trying and not trying essentially the same–it dissolves meaning, in other words. Love, apathy. Good, bad. Going, staying. Same, same. Does he want an apple? Sure, he’ll take an apple. But it would be just the same if he didn’t take the apple. Eating it won’t bring him any satisfaction, and not eating it won’t make him wish that he did. Take it or leave it. Take anything or leave it. Same, same.
Correct, This is what I got when I googled the word Gray.
Correct, This is what I got when I googled the word Gray. You’re welcome.

I can’t say exactly what kicked me into the slump I have named The Grays. I suspect it had a little to do with the crash I’ve been in for a few weeks now and from which I am still not recovered. I know that often when my body gets overwhelmed for a long period of time, eventually ‘it’ seeps into my mind, my emotions, and I feel psychologically overwhelmed as well. I’ve been short of breath on my feet lately. Dizzy, heavy, and extremely weak, particularly when I try to stand or walk or move around. My legs feel like cemented blocks that are so heavy to pick up and put one in front of the other when I try to move, that I mostly haven’t. It’s been that way for weeks now, and staying sedentary too long would make anyone restless I’d guess. It gets old having to put off things until tomorrow that you already put off until today, over and over and over. Your surroundings start to grow stale, and wanting to change them but being too sick to get out of the house becomes a whole other challenge. Of course, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been through crashes much longer and worse than this, and I’ve become pretty good at riding out sick times without giving in to despair. But that’s the thing– this isn’t really despair. It’s not heartbreak or grief or anger. It’s more like a hole where my feelings are supposed to be. A lack of feedback, a lack of identity, an inability to see myself in the world and where I fit in it. It’s this dimming effect on my surroundings and myself, blanketing the normally vibrant world in the same, colorless hue. Gross! This will not do.

Another entirely meaningless photo that came from googling gray.
Another entirely meaningless photo that came from googling gray.

The worst part about the Grays is not being able to easily or immediately pinpoint their cause, making it much more difficult to navigate and fix. It also usually means feeling bad about the fact that you feel bad, because you feel like there’s no real reason, or maybe no good reason, that would explain the source of your gloom. So you feel more bad. Have you ever cried and not really known why? It’s the worst! You start crying more because you’re like “Why am I even crying right now?!” Which results in a louder eruption of wailing, sometimes causing you to snort and sniffle, which might lead to a weird outburst of laughter, highlighting the absurdity of it all but then segueing back into loud sobs and a near certainty that you must be insane. It’s an emotional disco party! The funny thing is how absolutely lost I can feel in the midst of crying, buried and convinced there is no way out of the state I’m in. But almost immediately afterwards, in those moments of recovery where you’re sniffling with a tissue and taking those shaky, post-sob deep breaths, I always feel relief. I feel incredibly lighter and way more capable of finding resolve. There is always a rejuvenating sense of clarity–even if I’m still uncertain about the cause of my feelings. I can see myself again. I can see the other side.

One more just for funsies.
One more just for funsies.

I think sometimes the Grays emerge because I endure pain and I’m not always conscious that it hurts. Sometimes things make me sad unconsciously and I’m not so aware of them of them, or I just don’t understand why it’s painful, so I end up not giving it enough attention. I brush it off or just move on the next thing. But you can only do that for so long. There is always a breaking point. The pressure builds, the feelings need an outlet, and so there you are crying your eyes out for an hour after finding a dead mouse in a mouse trap. (True story)

But couldn’t it be said that I’m just a huge animal person and given that even dog food commercials make me cry it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to cry at the sight of a dead mouse? Maybe. But I don’t think it’s that, completely. All things convey life and death in their own way, and they’re all reminders of the strange contract we had to sign. But I think it’s simpler than that and I’ve been sort of dense about it. I think the truer source is that sometimes, being sick for so long really just gets old some days, and I don’t feel strong enough to smile about it and say that I haven’t given up hope. (I haven’t, and I really never will.) But some days, maybe it’s OK to just admit that things are really hard right now, that life is getting you down, that you wish you could change the things you know you cannot change. That you’re blowing it with the Serenity Prayer! Perhaps the Grays are a result of not giving our inner selves and feelings enough examination. A voice. It’s not that we should complain and whine. It’s more about acknowledging what is true despite the vulnerability it will highlight. Maybe sometimes you just say it out loud and look it in the eye and admit hey, this hurts. This is hard. I need some help. I think voicing the feelings and allowing yourself to be sad without immediately trying to fix it, helps open up a space between you and the pain, and within that space is where you can start to understand and move through it. Awareness helps bring even the smallest amount of light to whatever hole you find yourself in, and that light illuminates what’s on the other side. Finally, you start to see a pathway out. But it means going through first.

The challenge is always to express and validate the feelings without succumbing to them, getting stuck in your story. The opposite of dismissing the pain is letting it take over, using things that have happened as a crutch for negativity or allowing them to defeat your hope and enthusiasm. This is what encourages the victim mentality, something I work consciously to stay away from because it seems unsettlingly easy to go there and stay. It takes hard work to locate and live in the middle of these two roads–and I’ve found myself lost many times, too far down one or the other. Saying it and feeling it too much, letting it dictate too much of me. Or convincing myself it’s not worth talking about, to deal with it alone, not asking for help when I actually need it. Finding my way to the middle is where I see things the best. I can see my life from a distance there, unencumbered by feelings about it. I can see my true self without my opinions distorting it. I can reconcile who I am with the kind of life I want to live. I think so often the source of my pain is that I’ve convinced myself I can’t do or achieve the things I want or am meant to because certain things, like being sick, are inhibiting me from achieving them.  But when I reflect deeper about this I think the opposite is true. I think what I am meant to do and be is actually born out of and possible at all because of these very unique conditions–the ones I didn’t choose. The ones that were not a part of the plan. Perhaps they are in fact what’s allowing my real purpose to unfold, and not hindering it at all. Maybe all of this comes down to a simple shift in perspective: stop seeing things as road blocks that are actually opportunities.

Of course, it’s always easier to write and say these things than it is to practice them. I know that words only have so much power, and just writing them down doesn’t make them any easier to live by.  But writing has always been a relentless reminder of what is true and good in my life.  It helps sort out the real from the meaningless. It seems to function as a mechanism of discernment for me; a sifter of stories from truth. Thomas Keating wrote that “Discernment is a process of letting go of what we are not.” Sometimes I find peace in sitting down to write, because it forces me  to come to terms with the truth without feeling defeated by it. Like Nepo says, The instant fish accept that they will never have arms, they grow fins. Sometimes it helps me remember that despite being sick, I can still become who I am meant to and do the things I find most important.

I find that opening myself to the vulnerability of what might be revealed, I usually unlock some truth when writing that I’ve forgotten along the way. It forces me to look past the petty things that sometimes I lean on too heavily on. It encourages me to examine the deeper meaning of things that on the surface can seem painful without a purpose or value. I am often surprised by what emerges when I sit down to write–it’s rarely what I intended or consciously planned to address. I know it sounds a little pie in the sky, but often the words don’t feel like they’re coming from me exactly. Sometimes I don’t even totally understand them. I feel more like a medium thru which other sources are using to reveal more important things than whatever crap I planned on. This is when I understand our passions being called “gifts.” The words are not mine– More than writing well, my job feels like listening well, and then very carefully relaying whatever’s coming through. It’s a sort of prayer, therapy, and mediation in one.

I think the connections and truth and awakening that writing provides might be what all our passions do for us (and the world) on a deeper level. Gardening, physics, furniture making, piano, whatever–they’re all devices that help us see the world more clearly and to feel distinctly our unique “spot” within it. They’re a way to figure ourselves into the cosmic equation and have it equal One. They are reminders of our humanness. All I know is that the longer I go without writing, the further I feel from myself, and the more distant I feel from the world. Lost this way, it becomes much harder to find that path to the perfect middle where I can myself and the world with the right set of eyes.

It might seem surprising since I tend to do it a lot, but I am always extremely cautious to write about the dark stuff. I always hesitate to post during the hard days, not out of fear really, but more because I know that what I give my attention to is extremely important both in my physical and mental health. I have to be careful about where I direct my focus. My hope and my experience is that writing things out helps to reveal things bigger than the pain. It brings a level of consciousness to wherever I am, and that helps see my reality better. My goal is always to find something good to take away even from the crappy times, because for some annoying reason, pain is extremely educational. But in order to grow from it means we cannot stop at the pain. That’s where we start–the reaching out, sharing, crying, and writing all provide a way to feel and understand it, and also to keep moving forward. I’ve basically done all of those things in the hours I’ve spent writing this. So thank you for letting me go on for so long. Whoever you are. Because you know what? I don’t feel so buried by these Grays anymore. I haven’t succumbed to stagnancy and I feel a space between the pain and me. I feel more connected to the world, and I’m starting to see it in color again.

Health, Happiness, Away from The Grays

For Starters, Sign Here.

Published on by Mary Gelpi4 Comments

Boom Shock a Locka!

I invite y’all to check out this campaign, and to sign and share it if it feels right to you. 

This is a prime example of using the web as a platform for change and for being heard on a large scale. This is how the internet will contribute to the shift around this movement in so many ways. Here is where we demand accountability, where we can distinguish fact from fiction, and how we can begin to improve the poor understanding of CFS/ME with information in place of subjectivity. There is a curious amount of opinion surrounding this disease, and a major lack of knowledge. Balancing this scale is crucial if we’re to achieve the kind of large-scale transformation that were seeking. There truly has never been a more opportune time to help contribute to this kind of cause–the digital age puts the power right at our fingertips, and it’s up to us to use it.

Sometimes the universe helps align things, and I felt that way as I read this online campaign regarding The Pace Trials from 2006. I mentioned the study briefly in my letter, because this $5 million dollar study led by mental health professionals in Great Britain had a huge impact on the CFS world–unfortunately it was a negative one. The trial coordinators revealed its findings to an eager world awaiting answers, and it appeared they’d found some. Trial professionals claimed that Graded Exercise Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy had profound results on people with CFS, in fact it led to recoveries in a good portion of trial participants! The news spread quickly, and it influenced not only public opinion of the disease, but public policy regarding it. Benefits were slashed for disability after the trial when it became clear that these “sick” people didn’t have a disease so much as they were simply de-conditioned, and either simultaneously, or as a result, were also depressed. They didn’t need rest, they needed to push through and sweat it out. Either way, it worked! Great. Except that, it didn’t work. 

After third parties began to break down the details of the trial after some initial numbers didn’t add up, they found huge errors in consistency, methodology, patient feedback forms, and in sticking to scientific protocol in general. The problem is that by the time all these issues with the study came to light, that false message had already been conveyed, the damage done.  How does that phrase go? Lies will travel halfway around the world while the truth is still lacing up it shoes…

There seemed to be no official consequence for what turned out to be either massive negligence or outright wrongdoing on behalf of the study’s organisers. Worse is that the Trials are still cited as scientific proof for the idea that therapy and exercise are helpful to people with CFS, even though specialists in the field and patients attest that the opposite is true: exertion can be severely damaging to a person with this disease. It’s the modern equivalent of advising diabetics to simply eat more sugar, just a little bit at a time! Your body will slowly learn to tolerate it! The point is, this trial either directly or indirectily halted progress for CFS/ME by helping to solidify a theory that never turned out to be true. It continues to inform decision makers and is still cited as legitimate science even though it fell far short of that. The irresponsibility of the trial and its coordinators set an already struggling and sick community back, and I think we have to be proactive about preventing any further damage that could result from misinformation like this. It’s a timely matter that is up to us–the internet doesn’t favor fact over fallacy. It’s simply a medium moving all data at an insane speed; the burden is ours to discern between what is true and what falls short. We’ve got some catching up to do, but at least now there’s a way we can. 

This is personal for me of course, but it’s also about keeping public officials in line and holding them accountable for the decisions they make. I like that we have the ability to hold serious matters like this under the light, that we are able to help correct wrongdoings and achieve transparency where we didn’t always have the power to before. This petition asks to retract at least parts of this “study” from being included as legitimate research, which seems fair. Im hoping it will help leave the myths around this disease in the past and move us forward with the kind of ground-breaking science and studies needed to finally find a cure, not secure a stagnant status quo. You can read more about the trial through this petition or check out some other websites at the bottom of the page.

Sign the petition here:

http://my.meaction.net/petitions/pace-trial-needs-review-now

You don’t even have to wear pants in order to make a difference today.

yeah.
yeah.
Health, Happiness, Sign It!

TRIAL BY ERROR: The Troubling Case of the PACE Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study

PACE Trial Authors Feeling the Heat Over Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Trial

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2377/7/6/COMMENTS#289542

An Open Letter to Myself, To Be Read 10 Years From Now

Published on by Mary Gelpi15 Comments

Dear future self,

Congratulations, you’ve made it to 41. If you’re still living in your parents pool house, don’t feel bad. We all move at our own pace. I hope this letter finds you well. You know, I normally hate that line, mostly because it’s hardly ever genuine except as an ice-breaking device used in emails just before asking for something, usually money. But I mean it. ‘Well’ is pretty relative term, but you know what I mean–better. Better than today. It’s November 5th, 2015.

For record-keeping, I’ll set the scene. I’m writing from bed, the computer in my lap and Monty sleeping on the edge in his spot. I am achy, heavy-bodied, and nursing a head-ache that now spans the entirety of my face. It’s strangely resistant to pain medicine so I use frozen peas to numb it. I feel the force of gravity pushing against every move I try to make. Standing up makes me dizzy and faint, so I’ll spend most the day sitting or supine. (POTS) My brain is fuzzy and clumsy. My thoughts come fast and then stutter and mix up on their way out. Writing is better than speaking. It’s more patient. My heart mimics hummingbirds and butterflies. It makes this audible “clicking” sound whenever I lay down, like my own cardiac stopwatch in which to keep time! My blood pressure spikes and drops, making simple things hard, like showers and teeth-brushing. (Dysautonomia) So I stay horizontal–a term my specialist uses and advises on days like today. But the Interstitial Cystitis makes this part harder. I peed 12 times last night! A new record. But who’s counting? This is how crash days go. Another part of the disease that goes mostly unseen.

Greetings From 2015
Greetings From 2015

But let me interject. The point here is not to belabor on about life with illness. This is simply the physical state of things, and the more important point I am making is that I am OK.  I’m not living a life that looks anything like the one I planned for, (haha, plans) but I’ve found meaning here too. I’ve forgiven what my life was supposed to be, and grown into the one I have. It’s smaller-sized than the one I dreamed of, and it bewilders more people than it impresses, but I’ve actually learned to like it here. Every day despite health and money and a recently sad surplus of dead animals in the pool, I crawl into my bed at night and it hits me that I’m OK. A small flick on the side of my head.

Is it a contradiction to say you’re fine but also expect change on a large scale? I hope not. But it’s partly the reason I’m writing now. I detect a shift underway. I hear a slight buzzing sound behind the drone of everyday life, and it hints at considerable change to come. I hope in time this letter will be a relic from an era long gone. I hope it will be a nearly humorous account of the way things used to be once, but that it won’t sound all too familiar. I hope that physically I’ll just barely be able to recall it, like the name of a childhood teacher on the tip of your tongue. That’s my hope, but who can know? Just in writing this I can feel my future self alive somewhere; that she exists on some unknowable plane, and that when she reads this letter it will make her happy.

It’s my belief that if I’m not cured by the time I read this, that my mom will have shot me like I made her promise to. Only joking calm down. If I’m not cured, I expect at least to be a much higher-functioning version of my present self. I should be able to work at least a few days a week, to attend (and dance at) a wedding, or to go on a bike-ride and not crumble for days after. I don’t see this as wishful thinking or as the result of divine intervention. I see FDA-approved, effective treatment options as an only natural, foreseeable byproduct of the serious research to come by governing agencies like the NIH and the CDC. As I write this, there are zero approved treatments. My 25 pills a day are mostly bandaids on a broken knee.

Up until now, the world hasn’t quite known what to do with someone like me, like us; chronically sick people who don’t get better and don’t die. And I understand their unease. This is all relatively new, and we just haven’t developed the etiquette for it yet. But a bigger issue exists in this realm, and it’s having a disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a name so comparatively small and demeaning, I don’t even like to say it out loud. It’s hard to keep my own eyes from rolling. Instead I call it Shit Turd Disease, which feels no less valid or serious, and has the added bonus of a cackle at the end. Out in the world, I don’t really feel like a person who has a disease. I feel like someone with a strange secret to keep–Something to talk about in hushed, apologetic tones. Or something better not to talk about at all. Explaining and defending it takes an energy you just don’t have. So you stay quiet, but there’s a loneliness in that choice.

And there are consequences to it. For decades, the voices of the sick have been drowned out by the loud, proud professionals with strong opinions about our disease. Their ‘efforts’ are continually led by the notion that we can be cured with exercise and positive psychology. This was what the influential $8 million dollar Pace Trials set out and claimed to prove. Exciting! But upon 3rd party inspection, methodological flaws were found throughout the process, basic but crucial scientific protocol was neglected, and there were blatant conflicts of interest: Trial scientists had longstanding financial ties with the disability insurance companies who’d rather not foot the bill for those with Shit Turd Disease. And yet these trials still helped solidify the narrative that these “non-treatments” were legitimate. For more than thirty years, this idea has fueled study after study, it has shaped public opinion and policy, but it has not actually made the sick people better.

But here is where I detect the buzzing. Our attempts to improve public awareness and patient advocacy are hindered by the obvious: We’re a sick, slow-moving crew, and many of us are house or even bed bound. Fighting to be heard requires a vigor that’s diminished when you’re sick. I imagine a CFS Race for the Cure! would be more like a Saturday Night Live skit, with an embarrassing amount of joggers passing out on top of one another thirty seconds after the gun went off, half of them being hauled off in ambulances. But we’re living in the age of technology now, without the prior limits that hindered communication and networking. Now our collective voices can be heard without us leaving the house, and that matters here. The digital age provides for a new accountability and transparency where there was none before. Maybe now that professionals know their work will be seen by many sets of eyes, they’ll be less inclined to make those silly mistakes like those of the Pace trials that deeply effected the lives of millions of people. All of this helps to balance out the power. This is how we change the direction of the fruitless path we’ve been on. We have always had the right, but now we have a platform–thank you internet– where we can be seen and heard, and we have to use it.

Of course, people will stick to their guns (even in the face of gun laws they’ll do it!) And that’s OK. This isn’t actually about proving anyone wrong. No, that is the egos fight and it doesn’t belong here. This is about knowing that silence never yielded progress, and that to enable the truth we have to listen as much as we talk. It’s about ending an era that has ignored the complexity and vulnerability of what is true for the convenience and righteous facade that comes from salaried opinion. At a basic level, this is a humanitarian cause. What does it say about us that we treat the sick this way? What we do to each other we do to ourselves. So let’s do better.

Curing and treating this disease has never been an issue of capability, intelligence, resources or technology; It’s simply a matter of the right people having the committed willingness to try. If we begin there, it will be enough. But that means really beginning. It means treating this disease like an actual disease, and not some commonplace complaint or nagging ‘woman’s issue’ to be fixed with yoga. It means at least 10 times the amount of annual federal funding toward research. It means leaving the politics and scandal and doubt in the past, and surrendering the ideas that have proved ineffective. Let’s begin with purity of intent–to understand and cure it so people can get their lives back. Then I can stop writing these weird letters to my future self.

There are a lot of different ways that the next decade might play out. I could very well be cured, married with babies, living the kind of fast-paced, busy life I watch other people live. I always imagined I’d have a daughter and name her Catherine after my mom. Of course I might still be sick, an unpaid blogger still living in my parents pool house. I’ve already reconciled both possibilities. I’ll be OK. But then again, I’m not alone. This is much bigger than me.

This is millions of people at the mercy of a disease with a bad reputation and a worse name. And I’ve realized it’s useless to keep crossing my fingers about necessary change. This letter isn’t written out of hope, but as a nod to the future that I feel called to make better, starting now. It’s a reminder that change is possible and it always starts small. It’s my own refusal to stay quiet, especially on behalf of the many sick people far worse off than me, too sick to speak up. When I read this again, it shouldn’t matter whether I’m sick or cured. If I’ve done the work, I’ll be reading it from a better world; where sickness is not a secret, where we gravitate toward the truth, and where the silenced voices are finally heard. If that’s the world I’m living in, this will be the reminder that we did it, and that we’re OK. A small flick to the side of the head.

See you in ten years,

Mary
And Monty

I Have a Time Machine

Published on by Mary Gelpi2 Comments

Here’s a poem I really like. It’s by Brenda Shaughness.

I Have a Time Machine

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future
at a rate of one second per second,

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant
committees and even to me.

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next
moment and to the next.

Thing is, I can’t turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—
well, not zipping—And if I try

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,
I’ll fall into space, unconscious,

then desiccated! And I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of that.
So I stay inside.

There’s a window, though. It shows the past.
It’s like a television or fish tank

but it’s never live, it’s always over. The fish swim
in backward circles.

Sometimes it’s like a rearview mirror, another chance
to see what I’m leaving behind,

and sometimes like blackout, all that time
wasted sleeping.

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting
to be found charming.

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down
so I can smoke.

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me
because the explosion

of some dark star all the way back struck hard
at mother’s mother’s mother.

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.
I thought I’d find myself

an old woman by now, travelling so light in time.
But I haven’t gotten far at all.

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like;
the past is so horribly fast.

Pretty great no? It’s funny how some poems feel like they were written just for us, as if the author knew exactly where we’d find it and what it would do to us, hitting us in the gut in a coffee shop! Or heart. Our insides somewhere. I love this part of poetry. How fast it is. How in just a minute or two you can cosmically connect with a total stranger, dead or alive, and feel more seen or heard than you have by actual people. That’s powerful stuff!

I’ve recently been reading Anne Sexton–her history and her poems–and both are intense and curious and heartbreaking, but deeply resonant and I’m eager to read more. I plan to order someones cheap, used copy off of Amazon, and hopefully I’ll find parts that are underlined or circled with little notes in the margin. This is one of my favorite perks of reading (used) tangible books as opposed to electronic, kindle types; the human mark on the pages. They’re like little visceral clues of other life, but exceptionally personal. More confidential than say, finding someones grocery list, although there are treasures to find in that too. Maybe I am just an alien from another planet seeking signs of life and getting way too caught up in casual life leftovers. But somehow I feel less alone when I see a persons scribbles to the side of a page. Their unique handwriting next to that flat text against the page– It heightens the effects of the words. It brings the whole thing to life. It always makes me think that someone else sat alone somewhere, reading these same words and they were compelled enough to write themselves. Maybe it was there way of writing back, hoping someone somewhere along the way would read what they wrote and feel something. I don’t know, but there’s just something…nice, about that.  Anyway, I think I will start with The Awful Rowing Towards God. Or maybe Live or Die and go from there. Did you know that Anne Sexton had two sisters, and one was named Elizabeth Jane, and the other one was named Blanche Dingley? BLANCHE DINGLEY?! I wonder if Elizabeth Jane gave Dingley shit about that.

Health, Happiness, and Poetry. Pure Poetry. 

Under Water.

Published on by Mary Gelpi16 Comments

I need to spend more time under water.

Last Monday I returned from a trip to Miami where we celebrated a few things, including my birthday. Thirty one- the best yet! Maybe it was a birthday present from my central nervous system, but my body held up pretty well for me during my stay there. I’m also a little better at saying no to certain things when I know I’m close to crossing the invisible line. My threshold or whatever. Anyway I was able to partake in some awesome things that I dont’t always have the health for. I told my brother I wanted to snorkel for my birthday and he assured me this was not a problem.  At the beach I submerged myself in the ocean and was immediately comforted by it. Water in general has always felt healing to me, but a warm ocean in the summer is at the top of the list. We could have spent all day out there. All day and all night if my body permitted it. There is something truly holy beneath the surface. I like the muffled silence and spotting darting fish and pretty much anything that moves. We saw so many different types of fish, and every time we’d spot a school or something I didn’t recognize, I’d make my brother Nick come to the surface and tell me what kind it was. I’d repeat it out loud, then we’d go back under. I’m really terrible at remembering the names but I’m trying to learn. I’ve already forgotten so many, but I can say with certainty we saw a crap ton of huge, colorful parrot fish, some barracuda, and a bunch of Nemos and Doris. (Technical names) It was Heaven. My three-year-old niece Olive requested that we find her a starfish and we both searched diligently and came up short. But my brother did find a baby sea turtle, and that was pretty righteous.

unnamed-2 unnamed

Isn’t he so cute? Anyway we came back to shore and had lunch, but most of the time I just kept thinking about getting back into that water. It’s almost Church-like swimming around down there. Somehow in spite of the beaming life everywhere you look, theres a stillness to it. Everything slows down and feels at ease–within me, anyway. I’d like to spend more time in the ocean, specifically underwater. I do well there. I think that’s my goal for this year.

Inevitably all that activity ended me up in a week-long hibernation for the last six days. It’s pretty normal to crash after I travel anyway. And eventually all the extra “curriculars” would catch up to me physically. But I was grateful to hold up for as long as I did. It’s funny, you’re always calculating with this illness. Saying yes to one activity usually means you’ll have to say no to some other one tomorrow or the next day. You’re always “borrowing” energy: allocating it as if it were a monetary budget. Going over, or spending too much, means you’ll pay. So you’re always considering cost and reward and whether the consequence will be worth it or not. You don’t always get it right, but you get better as time goes on. In the case of swimming and snorkeling and fishing that day, totally worth it! Still, I think there is a better way to navigate this illness than living the “push-crash” lifestyle. Doing what you want for a certain amount of time, and then spending at least double that amount of time in bed in the future. Most CFS’ers live this way, not because it’s the best or right way, but because it’s A way to at least do some things and not live your life in bed. Anyway, I hope to discover a more sustainable way to go about this, but it works for now. Kinda sorta. You get me.

On another note, I keep doing this thing that I’m trying to stop. I write and write and write and then I edit and edit and edit and then the essay goes in new directions and I want to keep everything a decent length so I start over and consequently end up with 6 different half-written, diligently edited posts, none ending up on the blog. It’s a pretty stupid system and I’m going to try and stop doing things that way. Sometimes my idea about how I want things to look or turn out hinders my goal which is not just to write well, but to write consistently and allow part of what’s happening in #marys sick life to inform my stories–even if what’s happening is boring or sad or awesome or mediocre. It’s a continual lesson in letting go that I’m still trying to grasp– write things out and then let them go. Although it’s easy to mistake for editing, I think I often look through my own words trying to take on the role of reader instead of writer, and I develop this anxiety that I’m not getting through accurately or perfectly representing myself, so I hold off on publishing. But I know this is silly because all I can do is be who I am and write what I know, and if I’m judicious about that then I don’t need to worry about the rest. The truth is I am the writer after all and some of writing is trusting the reader. Showing and not telling, yada yada yada. I think my incessant “reading over” and modifying is just another way to prevent me from putting myself and my words out there on a medium where they’ll live on their own and be subject to scrutiny. Could I really be afraid of criticism after all this time writing on a blog? Probably, which is entirely embarrassing. Because who cares! But pride and vanity are some powerful little devils, and the only way to move past them is to write on despite the superficial concerns.

I’m going to try harder to work and contribute to this space and not become too serious about the whole shebang. Especially to the point where it stifles things. It’s pretty silly getting so analytical about it, because it’s really just not that important. I care deeply about it, but when I zoom out and consider everything, this is just a ledger of one persons life. And pretty unexciting life, at that. I think my concern lies in whether or not I’m contributing meaningful things that will move me and others forward or if I’m just whining on a stick. I am hoping by the end, what and whenever that is, this will all will reveal something larger and more dimensional than a woman child’s diary about sick days and her dog. But even if it is that. Who cares? I only need to focus on what’s in front of me and stop pausing to consider a future I don’t have control of.  The one thing I don’t want to do is restrain myself or my words or the creative endeavors I want to pursue all because I’m worrying what it will all “look like” in the end. Concerns like those are what kills momentum, and good ideas, before they even get a chance to materialize. My truer goal should be simply to write and to allow the words to do what they’ve always done–help me to see things that my thinking mind can’t.

So, hopefully you’ll be hearing a lot more from me and I from you. I am feeling happy to be one year older, to know myself even better having lived on earth for three hundred and sixty-five more days as ME, Mary Gelpi. I’m becoming pretty good friends with myself and we’re getting along well. We’re practically finishing each others SENTENCES. Thank you Nick for exploring the ocean with me, and tugging me back to shore when I was too tired to swim back myself. What else are big brothers for?

Health, Happiness, Thirty One.

Haikus From A Crash

Published on by Mary Gelpi4 Comments

Spent Saturday night
Forgetting. Acting my age.
I’m young, I can dance.

For four nights, five days,
Never left my best friends bed.
(Hospitality.)

This tin-can music
On hold with the pharmacist
Tries to get me down.

Robot voice thanks me,
Your call is importan–Click.
Avoid urge to die.

Doc: Where is the pain?
Head, Muscles, Joints, Skin. Constant.
Doc: Are you depressed?

Congratulations!
Didn’t go to med school but,
I’m my own doctor.

The universe yawns-
Striving for life I don’t have,
I’ve become Facebook.

I cried when the maid
Killed the spider in my room.
Alone, things get weird.

Can’t forget him now–
Broke up just in time to find
Ringworm on my thigh.

A measure of will:
No one needs you anymore
Do you feel alive?

Monty at my side
Asks for nothing the whole day
Meet visceral love.

Tail wags in his sleep,
Watch his belly rise and fall
Love, you make me weep.

If Haiku rules were
Seven-Five-Seven instead,
Would I still be sick?

Bzzz. Thud. Bzzz thud bzzzz
Angry bee against the door
None of us get out.

Sad signing the forms
Which say I’m incapable.
BUT IM SEXY YALL!!!

Day 6, I’m alive.
Under water asking if
Dancing was worth it.

I should know better,
But I remember dancing,
Don’t remember price.

Health, Happiness, and Haikus.

Under the Water.
Under the Water.

*Shout out to Newman for haiku inspirations and continued decency in a perverted world.* 

A Baby Was Born

Published on by Mary Gelpi4 Comments

I really didn’t think we were going to make it. Amelie’s due date was June 18, and my mom and I were scheduled to arrive on the 16th which, in hindsight, was cutting it rather close. She started having contractions on the 14th and by the next day I was convinced we’d never get in there in time. I prayed that he’d wait for us but it was pretty clear by then that the baby would arrive before we would.

Somehow, despite multiple airplane delays and three days of threatening labor, my mom and I arrive to California, pea still in the pod. He waited for us after all. We arrived late, and everyone was tired, mostly Amelie. As we all turn in for bed, I tell Amelie and Keegan to wake me up if anything happens during the night. I don’t want to miss a thing. I am weirdly excited getting into bed, the way you are on Christmas Eve as kid. I finally get to witness the miracle of life. Score.

Roughly 5 hours later, still very dark outside, I wake to Keegan whispering in a firm voice at my door. Mary. Mary! I am still half asleep, Wha? I mumble. Her water broke. We’re going to the hospital. Yes!! This is what I had waited for. I knew something would happen tonight! I dressed quickly but hesitate a moment about what to wear. Are jeans appropriate labor attire? In my peripheral I spot Amelie, walking ever so cautiously down the hallway toward the stairs. She’s in a bathrobe, moving like a ghost, groaning in pain. Are you OK? I ask, dumb question probably. Hurry, she says. We need to go. I quickly put her arm over my shoulder and we walk gently in unison, a conjoined ball of sisterhood floating down the stairs. Where’s Keegan? She asks. I assure her he’s coming. I lie, I have no idea where Keegan is, but I assume he didn’t run out on us.

We walk out onto the driveway, the tiniest bit of dawn peaking at the horizon. Amelie is barefoot. I help her into the front seat of Keegan’s man van. I climb in the back but notice there are car seats on both chairs. Obstacle! I wedge my large butt into the bigger one, which doesn’t really work, so I sit perched up on top of it with half of me hanging off the side. Just as she’s about to ask where Keegan is again, we both see him, a spectacle headed our way; Keegan, running out of the garage as the door descends on him, holding a giant blue rubber ball in the air with both hands, as though it’s a trophy. What is THAT? I ask. Amelie tells me it’s some kind of birthing bouncy ball thingy that helped progress her first labor. But I don’t need it this time! she says, but Keegan is already stuffing the large balloon ball in the backseat, trying to wedge it between me and the two carseats. It’s making the rubbery noise that balloon animals make when being configured. I am laughing but only to myself. I don’t know if laughing is appropriate yet. You never know! he says, and gets into the driver seat. As he starts to shift the car into drive, Amelie stops him with a request: OK, I need you to go slow over the bumps and turns and stuff. But seriously go fast because I don’t think we have a lot of time. I hear Keegans signature cackle. OK, he says, hitting the gas, but easing down the curb of the driveway like a champ.

Now we’re driving fast on the California highway and the roads are all ours. Amelie tells Keegan to call the doctor on the way. I am rubbing her back like a boxing coach, but she says it feels good so I stick with it. Keegan talks to a woman on the phone, which then Amelie takes from him. She tells the woman she’s “In full blown labor”– A phrase both her and Keegan will use numerously in the next hour. This also makes me laugh. Please make sure he knows I’m in full blown labor this time. Keegan has been running the red lights, but now we approach one and there’s a state trooper in the lane next to us. Planning to run the light and then continue speeding, Amelie tells Keegan to let the guy know so he doesn’t pursue us. Keegan rolls down his window and the trooper does the same. Keegan: My wife is full blown labor. Cop: OK. Keegan: I’m going to run this light and then speed. Cop: OK. The light turns green and we speed off in the van. Dude couldn’t have cared less.

I notice Amelie is taking really short breaths from the pain. I remind her to slow them down and try to exhale through her nose. It actually works, she begins taking good breaths. I don’t totally know what I’m doing, but I know deep breaths are better than shallow ones. And they say it in all the Hollywood labor flicks. I rub her shoulders and the big blue ball drifts over to my side again, crowding me back there. I laugh to myself again. I know I will remember this car ride forever.

At the hospital we get Amelie into a wheelchair outside and Keegan throws me the keys to go park the van. In the wheelchair Amelie informs the nurse that she’s in full blown labor and instructs the nurse to run. The nurse reminds Amelie that she is going to be OK but that they aren’t going to run. By the time I get the car parked and up to the room, she is being hooked up to IV lines and monitors with all kinds of wires emerging in every direction. There is a surprisingly large number of staff hurrying in and out of the room, performing respective tasks. Amelie has one concern; the epidural. I’m ready for the epidural as soon as possible. Can you make sure they know that? That I’m ready as soon as they are? They are asking her a ton of questions and typing in answers or writing them on a chart. I imagine that she wishes the questions would stop. I’m familiar with this position; being in pain, needing help that only someone else can provide, but first having to answer question after question–none of them seeming more important than the pain. The nurse tells her as soon as she’s checked into the system, she can have the epidural. The Holiest of Holy’s.

I am standing to the right of the bed, watching a machine hooked up to her which monitors the contractions. It looks like a seismograph. It strikes me what an interesting device this is. A qualitative way to witness someone else’s pain, to measure it even. This part sticks with me. I try to talk her through the bad ones. Since I can see them peak and descend on the monitor, I’m able to tell her when the worst part is over. I remind her to breathe deep. There’s not much else to do now besides refill cups of ice, which Keegan and I take turns with. It’s just like the movies. Amelie informs another nurse that she IS ready for that epidural, just so she knows.

Finally, the last of the questions are answered, and the man with the miracle appears in the doorway. He is glowing yellow and angels sing in harmony as he makes his entrance. Amelie perks up. Absurdly afraid of needles normally, she couldn’t wait for this one. It only takes a few minutes, and then the magic starts to work. You can tell because Amelie has color back in her face and relief in her eyes, as though she can suddenly breathe again. Not to mention she’s smiling, and much more chatty.

Now everything slows down. Keegan and I take a nap. I guess numbed up Amelie continued to labor. When I wake up a bit later, my mom has arrived with coffee and food. We eat and re-energize and prepare for the big show. Just a couple hours later, to the nurses surprise, Amelie is eight centimeters and the time has come. This is it! Yeah! The only problem is that the doctor is not here yet. He’s on his way from another hospital, but he is in traffic. Note: California traffic is different than Louisiana traffic. My mom and I sit at the bay window, on the lookout for Doctor James as the nurses quickly turn the room into a saran wrapped tent. There’s another doctor there in case hers doesn’t make it, but Amelie likes sticking to plans. It’s kind of her thing.

The nurse tells us he drives a gun-metal grey sports car. Of course. No sign of him yet, so my mom and I start singing Amazing Grace aloud in a two part harmony. She taught us this years ago– something about the vibrational energy of that song. We have sung it ever since when we’re in a bind, and somehow it always comes through. There we are, Amelie trying to hold off pushing, the nurses preparing the room like busy birds, and two women at the window singing in decent enough harmony, (I may have been a bit flat). By the third verse, a small silver sports car pulls up and a tall doctor rushes out. He’s here!! We all cheer. Amelie looks like she’s about to have a baby.

The doctor can barely get his blazer off and the scrubs on before she’s on her second push. I stand to the side between the doctor and Keegan. I even hold a leg! It all happens really fast. On the third push we can see his head. It is crazy. Amazing. Five pushes later, he is out. He doesn’t cry right away and the silence is paralyzing. I am worried but don’t say a word because neither the doctor or nurses seem concerned. It feels like forever but was probably four seconds. As Amelie gets both hands around him and brings him to her chest, he finally cries out. That weak, pathetic, entry level cry. The cry of alive. As soon as I hear it, I start to cry too. I never used to be emotional like this. But it feels good. Happy tears. He doesn’t even cry long. He gets swaddled and passed around to everyone like a perfect soft package. I watch his parents hold and love him, both grandparents, and then it is my turn. I can almost feel the love he’s been given already radiating from him. I think about his entrance to the world–how every baby should be this lucky. He’s alert, blinking slowly as he takes it all in. How he can already smell so good, I have no idea. I hold him and cannot fathom that any of us were ever this small, this helpless. Why do we ever convince ourselves we are meant to do this alone? Holding him I feel solid relief. Not just that he’s OK, but that the world is OK. In this moment, he embodies the world. Everything will be fine. He’s here. It’s perfect.

The World.
The World.

Health, Happiness, Happy Birthday James.

R and R and R

Published on by Mary Gelpi6 Comments

I’m writing from my iPhone, supine on the couch. It’s the first time doing this because up to now I’ve experience so much frustration typing on this keyboard that the idea of writing a whole blog post on it felt out of the question. I could just imagine the many many predictive text failures and me growing angry and tired. But, alas, I can barely move. I don’t feel strong enough to sit upright and feel comfortable. All my limbs are weighted, my head feels like a bowling ball supported by a twig.  All my appendages hang like deadweight to the floor. Mostly I feel really brittle.

I had a bunch of nerve-racking dreams last night with intermittent nightmares. I wake up with 5 or 6 vivid memories of all these scenes playing out in my mind. Many times it’s in the middle of the night and I wake up to the sound of my own voice saying “Mmmmmm” but unable to get the word out, my jaw straining and my mouth tight. This is also happening in the nightmare; I’m unable to speak, often unable to move, and I’m trying to call out. The “Mmm” sound is for Monty. He is who wakes me out of the dreams. Almost always I awaken, sweaty and afraid, and next to me is Monty, standing close to the bed panting loudly. A few times he’s pawed at the bed or whined to get me out of it. He is my relief. I pet his head and slow down my mind, my breath. He grunts and quickly goes back to sleep. I’m continually amazed by his visceral nature and intuition. He’s more than a therapy dog. He’s a rescue dog.

So many times, when I fall back to sleep, I return to the terror or anxiety or the inability to move, or be heard. Sometimes picking up right where the last dream stopped. Even when they’re not nightmares, they’re usually taxing and filled with angst. Or I’m just too sick to keep up with the characters. This morning just before my eyes opened, I was trying to keep up with my brother and sister who were packing up and moving from our house. My brother was mad that someone had dirtied the bathroom walls and I had a washcloth, sluggishly trying to wipe them down but struggling with my shaky arms. I could barely complete the task. I explained I was trying my best and to go easy on me, that I was exceptionally weak. ‘Why are you so weak?’ he asked, looking me straight in the eyes. ‘I don’t know’ I said discouraged, returning his dead pan. That was it. I opened my eyes to Monty on the bed and my whole body aching, but worse was the heaviness over me. It was so hard to move my cement limbs. It took way too much effort. As I struggled to get out of bed and merely stand up I thought “Ah, well, that explains the dream.”

In fact I think my dreams have deeper meanings than just their physical implications, mirroring my condition. But certainly my symptoms heighten the scenes and details. A while ago I dreamed that metal shards were sticking out of my kneecaps and my legs had a bunch of broken glass stuck in them. (Having glass shards in my skin is a recurring detail) When I woke all my joints were aching, most of all my knees for some reason. The rest of me had that general ache, and it was interesting how my subconscious was using those symbols to reflect my physical reality. Anyway, when I think back on them later, I think, did I get any restorative sleep? I wake up feeling like I ran a horror marathon all night! Not all nights, but most. And it’s interesting to me. Many of my days aren’t filled with a lot of action, but it’s like I have this whole other life when I go to bed at night. And sometimes it’s really amazing. This year in particular, I’ve been able to ‘decide’ to fly and I do it a lot now. It truly feels like I have actually flown, I am amazed and exhilarated in the dream, knowing it’s an incredible thing. As soon as I believe I can (like thinking a happy thought in Peter Pan)!or remember that I did it in another dream, I do it. And I experience it fully.. Looking down at roofs of houses, flying and landing onto branches of tall tress. Last night was theatrically hilarious: I flew real high up above this pool, turned upside down with my arms out like Superman and nose dived while doing full 360 spins into the pool. And I knew that I looked like those Olympic divers who land perfectly into water without hardly making a splash. I was showing off, and it felt great! This was just before I realized we had to leave and I was heavy and weak trying to get out of the pool. I didn’t seem to function on dry land. That flying part was fun though.

Unfortunately the rest of the day so far has remained in a crash state. Extremely weak and fatigued, super dizzy every time I stand up, with my hearing becoming totally muffled and my heart doing all kinds of weird things. I’m short of breath and winded even though I’ve barely moved at all. I was supposed to go to a wedding which I was looking forward to tonight, but I knew exactly what would happen if I pushed it and went, so here I lay, with Monty next to me waiting for any movement that looks at all promising .

Days like these are hard, but they used to be much harder. I’d fight them, racking my brain for a way to make it work– to keep plans, to fulfill my own or others expectations, to demand that I was in control and not my body. If I gave in and said no, I’d torture myself imagining all the fun I was missing, and grow angrier at my circumstance. I’d feel hopeless and my mind would exaggerate the ‘unfairness’ of my life with this disease. But saying yes always yielded the same bad result–a deeper crash and an extended amount of recovery time. Which would make me miss out on even more. Now I feel more in touch with my body–I usually know deep down whether or not I can or should do something, and when the answer is no, I spend as little time harping on it as I can. I’ve practiced surrendering faster and divertig my attention to what I can do while I’m in whatever state I’m in. And honestly there is plenty– the iPhone alone can busy you for hours. Yes it stings to miss out, but my wisdom in making the better decision and my acceptance with whatever that is has grown. I think with an illness like this it’s almost a lesson you’re forced to learn. The alternative is just suffering on top of suffering, and ain’t nobody got time for dat.

I’ve got two good books: A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson and Dance Dance Dance by my favorite Murakami. There is Mad Men Season 6 I haven’t seen yet. There are rain storms that continue popping up that I like to close my eyes and listen to. There is food in the fridge, (my mom texts me,) and there is the gift of time I’ve been given to rest and recover through days like this. And it wasn’t always that way. I have to reming myself what a gift that actually is.

As for the dreams, I’ll try to write them down, and since I’ve learned how to fly, perhaps I’ll learn how to shed my physical issues in that world too. Or I won’t. Either way, in this sedentary life of mine, sometimes those active dream-filled nights give me an adventure that invoke my mind and heart, and that’s pretty cool in itself. (Minus the glass shards.) Especially because I remember them so vividly. Anyway, sometimes it takes stepping back and changing the filter through which we see our experience to see all the treasures that it contains. For me that comes with writing, and having the chance to do that on a blog and being able to connect with people is one of the greatest gifts I have right now. So thank all of you for being so supportive and reaching out often. It’s been huge for me.

Now, back to nothing.

(Kiddinggg)

Health, Happiness, Recharging.

We Can Do Better.

Published on by Mary Gelpi14 Comments

I noticed an article in The New York Times recently titled “World Health Organization Urges More Care In Naming Diseases.” In early May, the WHO issued new guidelines for naming infectious diseases in an attempt to avoid damaging inaccuracies and stigmas that often the name alone can cause. They emphasized caution and symptomatic detail when choosing one; no animal names like ‘Swine Flu’ or peoples names like ‘Lou Gerrigs Disease.’ The new guidelines are a proactive attempt to prevent “Unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors.” They also mentioned that “The best practices apply to new infections…for which there is no disease name in common usage.”

Of course I read the article expecting to see CFS as a prime example of how damaging the effects can be from a poorly named disease. When Myalgic Encephalomyelitis was renamed “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” in the early 80’s, it solidified an environment of dismissiveness, doubt, and critcism. A new stage was set: everything from the publics skepticism to the medical establishments cold shoulder were put into place, and little has changed in 30 years. Now if you had the misfortune of being sick with this disease, you were going to have two battles to fight.

I don’t just hesitate to say those three words out loud, I feel anxiety about it. Sometimes in doctors offices, I feel shameful saying it out loud, as if I’m confessing to how many packs of cigarettes I actually smoke each day. When I’m forced to say it, I swear I can hear any perceived validation deflate out of the room like a popped, zigzagging balloon. The words don’t hold any water on their own; they necessitate explanation that ends up sounding like defense. The words “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” are not only misleading and insultingly trivial, they sound like a hypochondriacs failed attempt at making “tired” sound serious. And that seems to be the general consensus–that this is a “disease” where people simply feel sleepy all the time. Sleepy is for kittens and babies, and the primary symptoms of this are far, far beyond the bone crushing fatigue we experience. But this is the problem with labels, namely inaccurate ones. There is damage in what the words imply and even more from what they fail to say.

Here’s an example. A few months ago, the Institute of Medicine released a 600 page report devoted wholly to examining and better understanding CFS/ME. The committee not only provided new diagnostics guidelines and better disease management, it acknowledged the severity of the disease and put to rest the idea that it is at all psychological. Surprising many, they acknowledged the issues stemming from the name CFS and suggested a new one: Systemic Exertional Intolerance Disease. (SEIDS) It doesn’t exactly slide off the tongue, but it does finally address a discerning symptom of ME, which is the adverse reaction, down to a cellular level, to even mild exertion. This is far different than general fatigue. An exhaustive study like this one from an Institue with no previous involvement with the disease is a huge step in the right direction. The validation it provided for many sufferers was big, and the recognition of the staggering lack of science and funds to support it will presumeably apply more pressure at the federal level for a major increase.

I happened to read about the IOM’s report and name suggestion from NPR News, which I follow on Facebook. When I saw the hundreds of comments underneath the article I decided to look, and they weren’t anything out of the ordinary. Out of hundreds of responses, most of them were like this:

.
Thanks, Steph. I’m cured!!!!
.
Totally! It’s like I’ve never met anyone with Diabetes who can eat copious amounts of sugar. It’s obviously bullshit!
Em, you don't have this. -Mary
Em, you don’t have this.
-Mary
.
This person actually doesn’t believe in Carpal Tunnel so I don’t know where to go from here.
NOPE!
Hi Brianna, NOPE!

I know it’s a leap to project the reactions of a few Facebook commenters onto the general public. But in this case, these attitudes are not at all the exception. They represent a ubiquitous perspective most people have, whether online or in person. And maybe it’s redundant to say, but this is simply not a normal response to sick people. It just isn’t. It’s easy to see why sufferers hesitate to say the name out loud at all. Look at the environment we’d be entering into.

So, is this of any consequence? Does it really matter that the general public understand a disease? Not really, besides the demoralizing and crappy way it makes already sick people feel, no, it doesn’t. These people aren’t doctors, (most of them) and so who cares really? Besides basic human kindness, is this of any real concern?

The thing is, yes, I think so. Namely because this attitude pervades more than an uninformed public. This lack of concern, eye roll response travels all the way up to the federal level. Or maybe it trickles down from it. It’s hard to say anymore. Irregardless,  by now the two are in some osmotic relationship– One fueling and informing the other. And when this is the attitude at a federal level, the effects are far more detrimental and consequential. $5 million allocated toward research for the last five years from the NIH is a detrimental effect. No cause, no cure, and zero FDA approved treatments are all the result of a disease not getting the attention it requires. Ironically, people who are sick with this don’t want attention at all. They just want to get better so they can have their lives back. But the shot at finding a cure relies heavily on the desire to find one and fund the science for it. When the perception of it is so casual and misinformed, it contributes to negligence– it prevents that possibility of a cure the way it has for the last quarter century.

I can’t help but wonder if the same outrage would exist from people if the disease went by its original name: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Would people scowl at its existence and call someone with the diagnosis a lazy-ass complainer who just needs to eat better? Would they judge them for being too sick to work? No, because those responses are not to a disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. They are responses to feeling fatigued; one is fire cracker, the other is an atomic bomb. I realize all of this may seem a little petty. It’s just a name and there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to this illness. But I cannot help but wonder if what’s fueling the size of those fish is at the core, a simple misfortune of a name. It’s crazy to think that a label could do such harm or have such far reaching effects, but I don’t doubt it in this case. The evidence is right there, in this abnormal anger healthy people have against sick people as if they’ve chosen to be sick.

The point is not to harbor on issues I cannot change and I know that. Forward is the only direction now. But there’s such a lesson here in accepting things at face value and the harm it can do when we trust that we know better, before knowing much at all. It’s not just a poor social stigma we’re dealing with. It’s having a totally debilitating disease which costs the country roughly $18 billion a year in lost productivity, and the lowered chance we have at getting better because it just doesn’t appear or sound serious enough. This is where labels have much larger implications than just confrontational dialogue and ousting sick people. It’s bigger than that.

It makes me think of the way I perceive things and other people in my own life. How easily I make up my mind sometimes, one way or the other, about all kinds of things. I think of hearing or reading about issues and people and how fast and automatic a decision or feeling arises inside me. Sometimes I’m proud, thinking I know better about something, even when I hardly know that much at all. I think, if I never would have gotten sick when I was nine, were I still a healthy, functioning person 30-year-old, quick thinking and totally capable, and I heard of a “disease” called “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” what conclusion would my mind jump to? What feeling would I get? If all I had to go on were those three words, given that I wasn’t a doctor or otherwise well-versed in diseases, what would that label say to me? That name in its own twisted way, appears to say everything, enough for people to hold up their hands and say “I’ve heard enough, thank you.” Enough to feel decidedly one way or another without hesitation. Quick decisions and judgments like that do harm for all kinds of people with respect to all kinds of issues. I think we can learn from this one, and do better in the future across the board when it comes to making up our minds but remaining strictly at the surface.

Illness is not something to undergo alone, and anyone who has experienced it long-term will tell you that. When people email me about their families dismissing them, doctors referring them to psychiatrists, or marriages that crumble because someone is suffering from a disease with so few options and a world that just doesn’t quite “buy” it, I feel angry and discouraged. Mostly because I believe in the good-heartedness of people and I know we’re better than this. We can do better. Turning your back on someone who is sick is more than insult to injury. It causes its own tragic pain, separate and worse than the physical kind. It’s a new kind of loneliness, in a time you need people the most. After twenty years of being sick, the last five being the sickest, the hardest and most demoralizing part is battling something that so invisible to everyone else, all the while your whole world is crumbling.

The truth is even though it’s still massively lacking, there is more research than ever going on, and thanks to recent reports like the IOM’s and the Pathways to Prevention, pressure is building to invest more into solving this thing. My hope is that in the meantime people will be at least a little diligent before ousting an entire population of sick people as hacks. I hope if you’ve got major beef with the illness, you haven’t just heard the name and stopped there. To learn more about it, Cortjohnson.com is a great resource with vast information, including current and future studies and well-written dictations about their meanings.  To those who are sick and discouraged, I hope you’ll read this and have faith that you’re not alone and that the answers will come. Progress is slow but it’s moving. Until then, please don’t lose hope. Worse than being sick is the thought that our life is over if we never get better. There is value to gain in all of these experiences, whether you’re sick defending yourself or dealing with someone who’s sick with something you don’t understand. But try and remember we’re all brothers and sisters here. We need each other. Maybe the history and politics of this disease hasn’t been our kindest hour, but we can still turn it around, even if it’s one less person casting judgment or turning someone away. As is the case with all social change, it always begins with one. We can all do better, and I’ve never lost hope that our future will be far brighter than our past.

Labels and categorizing are important, they exist for a reason. But in the case of CFS, and the WHO’s new guidelines for naming disease with caution, help exemplify the power and possible harm of labels. They must be chosen wisely. The  CFS label was not, and it did an injustice to millions of disabled people. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. And despite how long and twisted the history is, it’s not ever too late to turn it around. Slowly but surely, I believe that change has begun and we’re on the cusp of something major. Despite my bad days, I believe in the awesomeness of humankind. We can do better. So let’s begin doing it now.

Health, Happiness, Better.

Time To Kill

Published on by Mary Gelpi17 Comments

A little while ago, I was swinging on our porch swing while Monty did acrobatics with a stick and ran laps in the yard. I had been down for some time, but I couldn’t place exactly the source of the sadness. All I knew was that I could feel something missing and the result was not a loneliness but a “looked over” kind of feeling. It’s not uncommon for me to feel lost and uncertain about the direction and usefulness of my life, especially when I’m in a crash period. This feeling felt like it had roots in that. As I let my thoughts wander and my mind clear, these words entered my head and seemed to quiet the residual buzz: “I just want to make myself proud again.” It didn’t repeat itself like an incessant thought, rather the words just stood still in bold print, front and center in my mind. And then all at once I knew what that void I’d been feeling was. It wasn’t just a lack of pride, but the lack of pride and purpose that usually comes from working. Uselessness is a terrible feeling, and I know it arises sometimes from the fact that I don’t have a real job anymore. I haven’t in some time. And yet through this whole ordeal, that loss continues to cuts deep. It has me constantly wondering what I’m doing here and where I’m going and how I’m ever going to get there. As a working girl my path felt so clear-cut. I catch myself daydreaming of my desk and my business cards and the “importance” they implied.  But once the crutch of a job was gone, everything inside me felt upside down. Who am I if I don’t “do” anything?

Sitting in my bosses office and having to admit with a quivering voice that I “just physically couldn’t do it anymore” was one of the hardest moments of my life. My whole goal up until then besides getting better, was to find a way to hold onto that job. I knew if I was forced to leave it, it meant everything was irreversibly real. It meant despite what I planned or wanted, the illness was making decisions that I couldn’t change. It meant the scales had tipped and I was no longer in control. (Maybe I never actually was, but the illusion felt good) But now here I had come face to face with the truth that clinging onto the job was only causing me more suffering, besides largely effecting the quality of my work. Were I smarter I would have given in earlier and dedicated myself more seriously to getting well. But I was in a sort of denial up till then. I kept expecting to get better. I didn’t want to believe that this was truly going to be the new state my body. No one really wants to accept something like that, I think out of an inborn fear that doing so means you’re giving into something crappy and letting it take over–That you’re giving up on the possibility of getting well. But it was more just coming to terms with a reality and giving my health the attention it needed. Everyone around me seemed to know the time had come and were just waiting on me to call it, so I finally did.

I can remember solidly a few things from that conversation. I can still see his big sappy eyes as Andrew listened to me speak, and the honest calmness in his voice when he said  “It’s been hard to watch. I just can’t understand why this would happen to you.” I tried very hard not to cry but the tears fell anyway, much like they are now just remembering the whole interaction. We hugged goodbye and I tried to compose myself. I remember, I think in an attempt to lighten the sadness of that goodbye, him saying to please stay in touch and to come back and visit often. I said I would, knowing I probably wouldn’t. Knowing that life at the gallery would go on without me, while my own life was drifting into scary, uncharted waters. I punched out for the last time and felt totally numb. The French Quarter had just turned dark, freezing and damp, but I didn’t feel the cold at all. I paid the nice parking attendant with whom I normally joked around without even looking him in the eye. He made some comment about cheering up or smiling but I couldn’t bring myself to respond. I moved on autopilot like a robot. Once in the car all the terrible questions made their rounds. What would become of my life now? Who would I be now, sick and unemployed? What if I never get better? I tried to drown them out but the noise of the radio bothered me. That 40 minute drive home over the bridge felt like a dream. Once home, Monty ran up to me and my mom was sitting in her chair in the living room. Our eyes met and I lost it. “Well, I guess I don’t have a job anymore.” And that, as they say, was that.

Even though I fought it, leaving work was the right thing to do and in my condition, was just a matter of when and not if.  In the beginning it was a relief– not to have to fake well, to call in sick, to let down coworkers, and to constantly apologize. But not so long after, I began to feel this noticeable hole, like the gap your tongue slides through after you’ve lost a tooth. I had all this new time to kill but couldn’t spend it how I’d like. The adjustment was extremely difficult. Besides giving me purpose and pride, my job had contributed to my identity and livelihood. There was a little space carved out in the world called Mary, and I was useful there; I fit. I did what was expected of me and was paid every two weeks. But now I no longer occupied that space and I couldn’t make sense of what place I held in the world. Without the distraction of work, I also had to learn to just “be” and accept these new circumstances, which was also hard. When you’re sick like that you can’t just leave and go for a drive, or go get drinks with friends to feel better about it. It makes you confront your life head on since there aren’t the typical escapes. I had to begin accepting my experience and not thinking of my days sick in bed as total wastes. I’m still learning to do this, but it is possible. It began with adjusting the expectations I held for myself, and redefining what my definitions of “work” and “purpose” really meant. For so long work was something you did 40 hours a week and got paid for. And our culture nearly defines who we are by what we do. I no longer had a satisfying answer to that question. “Uh, Unpaid blogger I guess?” It took adapting to where I was at that point and not in the past. I was always going to feel shitty comparing my life sick to someone’s who was well. I had to get real about my truth. Still, those adjustments were hard and I am still learning them.

Life with illness means a lot of time on your hands and a lot of solitude. You have to learn how to be still, which I’ve learned very few people know how to do. You’re away from the typical distractions and noise and chaos often, so there is a lot of “being” and not “doing.” It also means getting to know yourself really well. Luckily, I like myself. We seem to get along. But all of this new vast time without a lot of outside expectation took a long time to really understand and warm up to at all. I had to remind myself that being sick is a part of me but not who I am. That took time too. As time went on I would grow more worried that I hadn’t re-entered the workforce. Or I’d feel these waves of inadequacy like I did recently. But sometimes I wonder if it isn’t the purpose of my soul that’s getting carried out because I have a body that doesn’t allow me to be busy and caught up in the regular tasks of life.

This experience has taught me big things and continues to now. It continues to teach me to let go of things, to be still and not be restless, to be OK being alone, and to accept myself as worthy even if I’m not doing anything impressive or achieving BIG things. Most of these were learned because my body wouldn’t let me achieve all I wanted to, and the lesson in humility has actually made me happier in some ways. All of it has made me come to terms with things that I truly find important, things outside of a job where the ultimate goal was money. If I look at this time away from work another way, it feels more like a gift. It’s allowed me to find and develop my voice for writing, which was my passion all along. It’s let me explore many other parts of myself that were not a part of my life when working. Even small things like learning to play my dads guitar and spending more time with my family that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s forced me to find the same joy and fulfillment from the small things that I used to require in the bigger or louder stuff. Today it was just being outside in the sun with monty and appreciating the moment.

I think it’s easy to look back on my life with a “real job” through rose-colored glasses.  I was “bringing home the bacon”and dressing in nice clothes and looked and sounded like someone who had it together. But I can still remember sitting at my desk sometimes and thinking is this it? This is what I do the next 60 years and then I retire? I’d be naive to say things were perfect and always made sense then, too. They didn’t. But it looked better on paper and gave me stuff to talk about when people asked what I was up to. Those conversations are funny now ;)  I was still wondering about my purpose and the meaning of things then too. I was still asking those same questions. The only difference is, I don’t have the disguise anymore. I am clearly not headed in any predictable direction and I truly don’t know what the plan for my life is. But, at least I’ve got some time to figure it out. All kinds of time.

Still I wonder, were I to be better tomorrow, totally healed and ready to emerge back into the quick-paced world, is that what I would do? Go back to work at some job, have office birthday parties again and two-week vacations, and then all my problems would end? I doubt it. What I mean is, I don’t think that’s what this experience is about. There is something more to it than a temporary roadblock for my life. I know it has more to give me than suffering, and my work is to try and bring light to what has felt very dark. I think by learning to navigate any experience the right way, it’s never a total loss. Sometimes it’s the very thing that propels us or makes us better. There is always more meaning and a path to discover if we stay devoted to following the thing that makes us feel alive– this usually leads to finding our purpose, our spot where we fit. I guess it’s the days when I know that who I am is bigger than the things that have happened, that I still have things to offer the world, and I accept the course of my day even in its smallness, that I make myself proud again. It’s often not in what I do anymore, but in how I receive each day and whether I live it out as a gift or not.

Even if all I do is try, that is truly enough.

Health, Happiness, #SickPride

You Don’t Have to Understand It (I Don’t)

Published on by Mary Gelpi6 Comments

About a month ago, my dad appeared at the doorway to my bedroom. He was smiling like usual, wearing his favorite striped terry-cloth robe. It’s still hanging in my closet. I was happy to see him; I’d been struggling with something and whether it was with words or a hug, his presence is always a help to me. He entered the room quietly and sat on the edge of my bed. I began speaking and started to cry. The grin he was wearing didn’t waver at all, he he waited and listened with total attentiveness, the kind you rarely find. His calm demeanor and ease despite my tears comforted me, as though he knew something that I could not. When I paused he said “Be strong Mary,” like some kind of Indian warrior, but less warrior-like. He continued to smile as he spoke and reminded me, “You want to make sure you’re loved for the right reasons.” This felt like both a question and an answer. It sounds a little vague, but I could feel distinctly that I was heard and he understood me. His words were minimal but powerful; they gave me what I needed. I felt lucky to have him. Then, it was over.

The brash sunlight in my bedroom bursted in through my blinking eyes as I left one world and awoke firmly in this one. It’s bizarre but it usually happens the same way: In the first moments of consciousness, the dream plays out in its entirety in reverse, in maybe one or two seconds. But this recollection doesn’t seem to happen in my mind. It’s as though it comes from the center; my gut or chest. Then, it arrives in non sequitur bits and pieces and my mind immediately begins to reassemble them in order. In those first moments of wakefulness, the experience feels so entirely tangible and fresh, so within reach, I’m convinced if I close my eyes tight enough it will all come back to me. But most of the time there’s no going back. While the dream itself is sacred, there is something Holy in waking from it too. I have felt God there. It’s as though dreams give access into the eternal, and in those first blinking moments, the human mind hasn’t caught up yet. In this little pocket is where we can sit with the phenomenal before our thoughts flood in and diminish it into something digestible; something that makes sense.

The dream visit is like the Cadillac of post-death interaction. It’s a chance to see and hear and feel someone that you don’t have physical access to anymore. I feel extremely grateful when I have dreams with my dad. Beyond the refresher for my senses, there is power in them. I was given advice and comforted yes, but I felt actual love through that dream. I drew strength from it and I’ll treasure it among the other great memories I have of my dad. And that had me thinking. I’m always hearing people say that dreams “aren’t real” or shouldn’t be examined because they’re just imagination or a meaningless summation of random events and mostly just aren’t true. Of course, this has roots in pragmatism. A dream that your best friend is living in your refridgerator doesn’t mean that they are, hopefully. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately of dreams I’ve had with my dad, especially this most recent one. I’ve been recalling it, as though it were a real memory. And I’ve been trying to discern what the difference is between an actual conversation like this and the one we had in my dream. Didn’t it really happen? Isn’t it now a real memory? When you read the first paragraph, did you have reason to think it wasn’t real? It did happen. Not in our dimension but in some dimension. However unorthodox, there is still meaningful interaction between us. I don’t pretend to understand how it all works, but I know it is true. It feels as real as a phone call with my brother last week, or the heat of the sun burning on my neck.

Two weeks ago, we celebrated his 67th birthday. We always cook his favorite meal and group-text photos of the food like a bunch of nerds. We caption them with the funny things and phrases he always said. It’s happy. It’s a chance to remember him and hear his stories and the awesome things he did or the weird songs he sang on his guitar. It’s all an opportunity not just to celebrate but to know him better, which I’m perpetually trying to do. For a long time I didn’t allow that to happen. Since I didn’t truly grieve him until college, I entered my twenties still knowing and remembering him as my 12-year-old self. There was a chunk of time when I shied away from talking or hearing about him, afraid it would make me cry which I hated to do in front of other people. It pained me to see other people cry over him too. Grief was something I had to learn, it didn’t come naturally. And whether I had cut myself off intentionally or was just too young to process it all, I had also cut myself off from getting to know him further. I unknowingly stunted our relationship, which I assumed was something that couldn’t grow once he was gone anyway. I was wrong, as it were, and so occasions and stories were just reminders he was gone.

It wasn’t until after facing and enduring the big parts of grief that things changed in a big way. I could finally begin to know my dad as my older self, not as a 12-year-old. I began understanding and appreciating him in new ways, and my love for him grew. It was then that our relationship began to evolve past sentiment and allowed for interaction. He existed as more than just memory, which was so fulfilling in my life. I found myself looking forward to any occasion regarding my dad. I love(d) to hear peoples stories about him and the wide open way he loved and lived. New stories and photographs all offer another glimpse into his life and who he was. I’m still putting the pieces together. Even the stories I’d heard before took on new meaning, because unsurprisingly, you process a story or memory much differently as an adult. I allowed other peoples sadness and I allowed my own because I knew it meant we loved him well, and that was in itself a comfort. A connection. All of it, including the dream, reminded me that he was still my dad and some part of him wasn’t gone, he or it was still there somewhere, maybe in that pocket between life and the dream.

I know that enduring the pain of losing him and reaching out to him again as though he could still hear me is what opened up our “line” where things like the dream happen. But truthfully the contact is not always so blatant.  Most of the time I have to look in the minute, the subtle, in things that are easy to dismiss. And I find him there. In heart shaped leaves. In a fly that won’t leave. In being so unconditionally loved and taken in by my family, including my stepdad, who my mom says my dad helped arrange. I find him in my nieces and seeing my brothers as fathers. In the morning. In rain. He loved the rain and was always reminding us that it was a sign of balance. Since his death he has continually shown up to special occasions with rain, if even a two minute shower. It’s raining now.

Getting to know my dad so many years after his death is a surprisingly positive and treasured experience for me. It’s been a privilege, really. Death is mostly talked about in hushed tones and at the risk of sounding morbid, which I’ve been accused of once or twice. But my dad has made death feel less serious, somehow.  When someone dies we label it as “bad” and when someone young dies we call it unfair. And while losing someone you love is one the hardest experiences in life, grief is not stagnant. Nothing stays the same, including the pain. And when you endure it, you also open the door for incredible things to happen. You’re brought intimately close to the lifecycle and there’s a sacredness there too. I don’t think it’s over when it’s over. I also don’t think people die and stick around to play with light switches. But I do think the line of communication is still there. It just involves reaching for it and experiencing someone using a new kind of language. It means being open to things you don’t completely understand.

I’ve always been aggressively curious and sometimes the weight of life and the worlds mysteries become too heavy and I get discouraged. Even mad sometimes. But getting to know my dad after his death and developing our relationship and talking with him while he sits on the edge of my bed…it superseded the comprehensible a while ago. It left me with far more questions. It’s made me an implicit part of something I don’t fully understand and for that I am so grateful. Because that’s most of life, anyway. We don’t actually know why we’re here or what happens to us when we’re not, but we go after it and love people and try to have a good time anyway. Knowing him has been a humble reminder that life and love and the infinite universe unfold despite our human comprehension. It reminds me that we don’t always need the answers in order to experience the fullness of life. Sometimes we get so caught up with thought, intent on answers and knowing that we limit ourselves from the phenomenal. Some things are beyond the realm of understanding, beyond words and category, and these are all but reasons not to embrace and cherish them as the miraculous treasures they turn out to be. I am looking forward to more. The rain has stopped now.

Happy Birthday to my Dad: THE ORIGINAL HIPSTER!
Happy Birthday to my Dad: THE ORIGINAL HIPSTER

This post is many weeks late. Chronic tardiness was my beloved dads only vice and he passed that on to me. So I’m sorry dad, but also I blame you. -Love, Rudy

Health, Happiness, Happy Birthday!

The Cusp

Published on by Mary Gelpi15 Comments

You know in those movies where the main character is down and out after shit hits the fan and they’re nearing rock bottom but then comes this pivotal moment, a complete momentum change where usually an offbeat sidekick character busts out the tough love and tells them only they can change the course of their lives and no one else can do it for them? Suddenly this head-boppy motivational song chimes in and so begins the montage where down-and-out becomes up and coming and bad choices are replaced with healthy ones followed by inspiring shots of her showing kindness to strangers and looking bright and happy and you know, you know, that everything is going to work out for her. Her life trajectory rockets into the stars where her potential is limitless.  And all the shit that hit the fan has settled and disappeared. It’s all going to be OK. It’s going to be good.

I find myself on the cusp of my own Hollywood game-change montage. In the movie of Mary, it’d start with me rolling out of bed… onto the floor.Then Monty enters, pulling me by my shirt collar into the kitchen, and scoots me a plate of pills with his nose across the floor. Then begins my momentum shift song, potentially this one by The Killers

…followed by shots of me lifting three-pound weights and flexing my “muscles” in the mirror. I’m drinking green frothy stuff and throwing away prescription bottle after bottle, high-fiving doctors and crossing off lifelong goals. Suddenly I’m the one waking Monty up to play, and I’m helping sick people and giving speeches in front of the president demanding  healthcare change for the chronically ill. Then the camera slowly fades in to me typing at the computer in the hazy blue of night; a question appears across the screen: Are you sure you want to change this URL? It asks. I click YES, only to reveal my new web address word by word: Zero.Pills.A.Day.Com BABY! (Scene) For some reason this hasn’t happened yet. So weird.

OK so yes this is more Hollywood than reality and there are a lot of flaws to the fantasy, like me “exercising” for one. And vitamins curing me, for two. But the other half contains actual hopes I have for my life. There are real changes that I can feel waking from dormancy, and ambitions I know I can achieve, all that’s required is that I jump off. Dig in. But when it comes time to leap, I feel hijacked by my own dumb brain. Maybe it’s more of a lump; a dense rock in my depths that thinks of a million other things to do besides the one thing that matters. Sometimes it’s a total jerk of a rock and suggests I’m incapable or unworthy, or that someone else could do it better. And the worst part is, I listen! I think yeah, I should definitely attack my nails and cuticles until they bleed instead of trying to change my life and others for the better and for forever. Smart, real smart.

When it comes to writing, I encounter the same consensus among writers, which is painfully simple: That writing every day is obnoxiously hard and often achingly lonely, but you just make yourself do it.   The writer Anne Patchett writes in The Getaway Car that the key to completing artistic endeavors is forgiveness. Before she begins, “I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. …Forgiveness is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again I will forgive myself.” I’m working to keep this in mind, since so many words and pages I write on this computer end up in the trash bin. It’s hard to know whether I have a discerning eye for quality work, or if I just don’t trust myself enough. It’s beginning to feel like the constant editing is just another guise I’ve unconsciously created to keep me from the jump. Amy Poehler advised in her recent memoir that in order to write you have to symbolically remove your brain and put it in a drawer, then listen to it throw a tantrum until it wears itself out–meanwhile you get going on the real stuff. “The doing is the thing. Talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. Writing the book is about writing the book.” See? Basically to achieve what you want, you just have to do it. Brilliant. When I’m not in denial and I’ve let go of excuses, I am well aware that the only thing in my way, holding me back, is me; and knowing that almost paralyzes me even more. But I also know that change starts with awareness, so I think it’s time I take out a hit on myself. At least on the part that’s so lost in thought it leads to stagnancy. I can’t believe the trouble thinking causes. Has Tolle taught me NOTHING!?

So many days I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going or what’s going to happen to me and it results in either laughter or becoming totally overwhelmed. Where I used to fear change in life, I guess when things were stable and I was happy, I’ll sense an aching fear that things won’t change. That I’ll live and die in my parents pool house, an unpaid blogger with 37 chronic conditions. I can’t grasp where my place is among the world. Furthermore I can’t decide whether our place is made or reserved. Do we discover it or carve it out all our own? I don’t know. I only know that most days I feel far from either. Other days I feel close to a major turn-around; like something huge is about to sweep me up and change all of this for the better. But by the next morning we’re back to the ordinary. I’m taking my pills and moaning and Monty is doing his best to get me out of bed. Often my life feels like a raft drifting in the ocean in no particular direction, and the wind in all its thoughtless surprise is steering the boat, not really taking me anywhere at all.

Guess we're going South. Cool.
Guess we’re going South. Cool.

Monty and I roam around this town I’ve historically hated more like tourists than anything else. No one knows us by name, besides the pharmacist of course. We spend a lot of time at this coffee shop with the angry barista where I’m writing from now.There are girls here wearing the same uniform I wore in high school. They look so young and cute in their plaid skirts and Mary Janes. They seem happy and untainted and I like the way they burst out laughing at hardly anything. I can’t remember looking that young, a sure sign I’m getting older. Since turning 30 last year, I wonder a lot whether I’m really growing up or just getting older every year. I am surprised to have found the first grey hairs on Monty’s snout this year and I feel like a mother watching her kid go to the prom.Where did the time go?! There’s all kinds of proof that time has moved forward and carried me with it.  And yet my life could easily fit the bill of a 17-year-old in many ways. Some days that’s exactly how it feels. As my friends are advancing their careers and getting married and having babies, I still bring my mom to doctors appointments and often shop at American Eagle.

I understand the circumstances of my life are different and I have to make peace with that every day. But I also want to make sure I’m growing through all of this and not just surviving it. I guess I thought there would be a day when I reached adulthood, as though it were some test you passed, like the BAR, and then were a certifiable adult. I definitely figured as a child that by age 30 I’d have it all figured it out. Of course, I was young and blissfully stupid then. I couldn’t know how obscenely larger and deeper reality would become. I feel like I know less than ever before. Every answer springs up ten more questions. I’m uncertain of mostly everything except for the aggressive love I have for my dog. In short I have no idea if I’m getting it right. And I can’t imagine the day when I’ll feel like an adult.

V413782_RC093
Didn’t You Hear?!

However, I did notice something of note at Victoria’s Secret last week. It was a routine underwear buying trip and my spirits were high because there’s something weirdly exciting about getting new underwear. There I was at the 5 for $25 wrack; my go-to section for cute and economical briefs. But I found myself all disgruntled making frowney faces as I browsed the huge selection. They were all Lisa Frank colors or animal prints. But worse, there was writing across the butt. Things like “No Peaking” and “Shopping Burns Calories!” adorned their backsides. Dear. God. The colors were blinding and I felt out of my element. I then spotted the sophisticated 3 for $33 wrack out of the corner of my eye, where the colors are muted bronzy tones and the designs are laced in floral maturity. More expensive yes, but, as I held a silky pair in my hands, modest, pretty and free of TEXT on the ass, I felt at home. This is where I need to be. I bought my favorites and left smiling. So that counts for something. I think.

Forward!
Forward!

All these thoughts weigh heavy in my mind; stupidly, uselessly. But they can be thick and hard to control. So I take Monty to the river, where he is immediately in his element and I can catch my breath. Monty finds the largest stick in the vicinity and makes me throw it in the water again and again and again. His enthusiasm is contagious and I laugh out loud watching him put his whole head underwater to find the waterlogged sticks. Something about returning to the spot and seeing the river flow in the same direction it did last time we were here quiets my head. Watching Monty run full speed and splash clumsily reminds me to chill out. That life is supposed to be fun, and it only moves in one direction.( See above) Collapsing under the weight of those thoughts makes me feel dragged by the current instead of floating downstream. I don’t know exactly who I am, and maybe it’s something that grows and changes until the day you die. I only know that life and happiness aren’t somewhere over there, and I need to stop assigning them to a future I can’t know. Times will be hard and times will be easy, but there is peace to be found in all of it if I can just trust myself and forgive the experience. More than that there are dreams to be made! I just need to move out of my own way so I can finally jump off. Over the cliff–that’s where the magic happens. That’s where the Hollywood montage begins.

Health, Happiness, the Edge.

Holiday Hangover

Published on by Mary Gelpi3 Comments

January 5th! That means I survived. And you survived. Now it’s 2015 and the recovery begins. A lot of things begin.

I’ve always been an annoyingly enthusiastic Holiday person, and I begin playing Christmas music and watching Elf on repeat the day after Thanksgiving basically until someone stops me. When I was a kid it meant presents and a much-needed break from school. In my OLD AGE it means reuniting with a family that live across four different states the whole year, save for one week in December. A week where we all fight for my moms attention with either boasts or ailments and both seem to do the trick: Mom did you see this article I was mentioned in? Hey mom does this mole look cancerous to you? Should I see a doctor? Is this scabies? We always engage in some sort of game whether it’s cards or Scrabble or Monopoly, and typically it ends in either a tiresome debate about rules until someone gives in or an all-out wrestling match if it’s late and there’s drinking involved. Usually one Gelpi ends up in the hospital– not because of wrestling but because we are a weak, weak gene pool of humanity and besides our humor we all share malfunctioning bodies, respectively. I’m not the only one! This year it was Nick, but he’s OK for the most part.

Making and carrying out a plan with our family during the Holidays is like a hybrid game of Guess? and Sorry! We aren’t on time, we aren’t organized, and worst of all, we laugh when things go wrong. It’s just our nature. I think once you witness enough tragedies in life you to learn to laugh, even during stressful times. Maybe especially during stressful times; a defense mechanism of sorts. My brother Doug is best at this. Any time things get tense, Doug is usually laughing or doing something so ridiculous that few of us can keep a straight face. Like subjecting someone to a Dutch Oven while laughing hysterically loud even though it’s TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE. Or in this case, playing the original Tetrus music by ear on Harlow’s cat piano.

He's single ladies...
He’s single ladies…

Anyway, a major exception should be mentioned here, and that is my sister, Amelie. Amelie is structured, on-time, and enjoys making plans and sticking to them. Was this a gene she was awarded that the rest of us missed out on? Maybe. Unfortunately her orderly ways and reliability only go so far. Trying to gather the lot of us in one location in a timely fashion is like herding cats, high on gasoline. But she does her best. Let’s just say the phrase “You guys are seriously ruining Christmas!!!!” is uttered more than once during our stay. But eventually we all arrive, end up at one table, and celebrate the way we always have; with food, drink, laughter and gratitude.

Correction, Christmas has NOT been ruined.
Correction, Christmas has NOT been ruined.

We’re lucky to have the hosts we do. They treat and feed us very well despite our chronic tardiness and lack of organization. Experiencing the Gelpi crew back together under one roof is a recurring novelty for me, and I never expect it to get old. Not unlike those baby dolls I used to ask Santa for every year as a kid; the ones that pissed in their pants and could digest plastic food.

Given how loud this year was, it’s hard to imagine that there will be two new babies added to the mix by the next one. But the more the merrier I say. Can’t have enough kids at Christmas.

Harlow, slightly overwhelmed
Harlow, only slightly overwhelmed Christmas morning. 

I promised myself this year I would not stay home for New Years Eve. For too many years I’ve either celebrated with my parents or gone to bed at 10:30 and woken up groggy to a new year without anything to commemorate it. I’m well aware that NYE is often overhyped and ends up in broken plans and separating from the group and yada yada yada. I guess since getting sick and falling off the social grid, I’ve craved dressing up and celebrating in some way at least with people of a similar generation. So this year I made it happen. My friend Merric and I wore pretty dresses, attended random venues and saw fireworks at midnight. I had zero expectations for the night, which quickly reminded me what a total recipe for fun that equals. No expectations means no letdowns, and it made all the incidental places we ended up in feel perfect: an uptown house party, a hole in the wall bar in the Marigny, fireworks on the river, and reuniting with an old friend on Royal Street at 2:30 am.

Walking down Canal street at that hour, I felt totally alive. I walked a zig-zag path having to cross the street to dodge what looked like trouble or some drunken leftover heading my way that I had no intention of interacting with. Still, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Among the noise and strangers yelling about a better year to come, I felt my ‘place’, like I fit somehow. I felt on the inside. I don’t know if it was them, or me, or the French Quarter at night, but in that moment I felt real optimism for the upcoming year. I felt complete gratitude to be alive and forgot about whatever circumstances I’d deemed crappy before. I guess for the first time in a long time, I felt my own age, and realized how nice it is to feel that way. I made friends, I made a fool of myself, and I probably made some mistakes. But they were mine. I was out in the world that I’m often only looking out at through a window. And that, for me, made for a perfect New Years Eve.

party.
party.
Hole in the Wall
Hole in the Wall
Living Room.
New Orleans Living Room.
Lilly.
Lilly.

Now, back to recovery. And no regrets!

Health, Happiness, Holidays.

Homeopathic Migraine Fix

Published on by Mary Gelpi9 Comments

When you don’t have your medicine, or your medicine isn’t working, and you’re caught in the throes of the diabolical, all-encompassing shitstorm known as a migraine, this could help save you from the depths. It has relieved my mom (fellow migraine sufferer) and I on many occasions. This was a trick she learned from a neurologist in the 80’s when she first became ill and suffered lights-out migraines, for which there were no prescription migraine drugs at the time. (I cringe) Sometimes she would have to endure the pain for days at a time in a dark room or end up in the ER when it could not be controlled. It was a rocky road no doubt, but this trick she learned helped rescue her from some bad ones, and when she shared it with me I was surprised to find it alleviated my terriblest horribliest vomitiest of migraines. And it’s pretty easy to do. I just figured I would share it with yall and if it helps even one person out of the fiery pits of migraine Hell, well then, we’re all winners really.

Here's what a bathtub looks like, in case you're too sick to remember.
Here’s what a bathtub looks like, in case you’re too sick to remember.

1. Get in a hot bath. The hot water helps draw the blood down and away from your head. If you can’t get in a bath, try using a heat pack around your feet or soaking them in hot water, but I find baths best. Try to sit upright even though all you wanna do is lay down and die. I get it, but sitting up will redirect the blood flow faster. And when you’re under attack, speed counts.

2. Wrap an ice pack around your neck. If you don’t have one, use whatever you can find in your freezer– frozen peas or strawberries or deer meat from your uncles hunt last year. All is fair in love and migraines. Wrap the ice in whatever form around your neck at the base of your head. The ice helps restrict the blood flow to the head, which is where your blood vessels are spasming, and redirect it downward. Think South. You want to send everything South.

3. Drink hot black coffee. Not some frappuchino crap either. You don’t want the sugar. If you can’t do coffee, I imagine a strong black or green tea could offer the same result, but I have only ever used coffee, so I can’t really endorse that one. If you’re like me you get crazy nauseous and often vomit during a migraine, so eating or drinking anything is the last thing you want to do. But just start with one sip. This is your way out. Keep taking small sips, and soon you’ll feel the first tinge of relief and find your stomach has begun to settle. I am unsure what mechanism exactly is responsible for this relief, but it’s there. Perhaps it’s stimulation of digestion plays a part–not sure. But more importantly, it’s a major help in quelling those haywire blood vessels in your brain-effectively serving the purpose of an OTC or RX migraine drug.

Caffeine works in an interesting way. There is a molecule called adenosine that is responsible for dilating the blood vessels in the brain. Caffeine mimics this molecule and competes with it at the receptor site. Once displacing the adenosine, it gets in like a ninja and constricts the dilating blood vessels– the ones causing that UnGodly pain that no one should feel. But we do. Welcome to life homies! Not to mention, caffeine has long been used in conjuncture with pain medicines as it aids in their absorption, particularly acetametaphine. So in the least, it can give some your pain relievers a boost if you take them. There. Now you’re cured.

It’s all about the power of three here; one alone won’t cut it. The triple threat is your best bet. I am of course not a doctor clearly, and everyone is different; it may not work for all. And obviously miracle drugs like Maxalt  and the like are more convenient and don’t require a bathtub. But when you’re desperate for relief, try this. In my experience the the proof is in the pudding. It has without a doubt saved me from immense suffering on a few occasions and my mom on many more, even when the strongest meds have failed.

The sooner you react to one the better, so act quick. Get naked, get ice, drink coffee. And once you’re able, drink a lot of fluid. Dehydration is found to play a big role in migraines, so replenish your electrolytes and restore your fluids asap. Especially because you probably puked them all up. On that note…

Good Night and Good Luck,

Mary

Thanks mom!

Living Masters

Published on by Mary Gelpi17 Comments

Finally, yesterday, the teeniest tiniest flicker of relief. I felt it. Though incrementally small, it was the spark suggestive of an end, or at least of an improvement. It’s been a very sick few days. But yesterdays glimmer of improvement brought me to the surface where I could breath again. It wasn’t major, but it was enough. Today, another slight improvement. I actually left the house and went to the pharmacy. That’s what we call progress people.

I don’t know what exactly caused this crash. The travel, new Miami germs my body couldn’t handle, the woman with the wet cough on the plane? Who knows. It doesn’t really matter I guess. I could feel something in the works throughout the trip. I felt rough most of the time, but, I still enjoyed my stay. Miami is nice and my family rocks. My brother Nick is another mentor of mine and always encourages my creative endeavors. He’s someone who materializes ideas instead of just writing them in a notebook, which is what I do. I envy his work ethic and it was nice to be around artists at work. I worked through some writing problems and we’ve begun a side project which I think will be great. It was nice. Look, I even caught a fish.

40 pounder
Unfortunately I think my brother later used this fish as bait.

Huge right? Of course I sort of declined at the end of that day and into the last few days, until I returned home Thursday. By that night I crawled into bed and as I pulled up the covers, the invisible monster went to work. I could feel it creeping over me, up through my limbs and under my fingernails. When I woke Friday morning it had swallowed me whole. I was submerged. The next three days were spent in bed in a dream state with intermittent stints of wakefulness. I’d awake for brief periods, feed Monty, feed myself, then dissolve into dream world again. Unfortunately I could feel the pain on both sides. In my dreams I’m looking for pills and can’t find them. Or I can’t get their lid open. That happens in real life too.

It can be disorienting when you spend more of your time in dreams than awake. Every time I awoke I  had to readjust to the surroundings, remind myself where I was. Everything was hazy and I felt weak and sedated. My body was out of juice; every move I made felt enormous and taxing. It’s a strange condition to be in, but that’s how it goes in a crash. All you can do is rest and wait for your body to come back. Luckily, Monty barely left my side the whole time. Each time my eyes blinked open, I’d spot him sleeping in some ridiculous position. As soon as I stir he’s on all fours, ready to go. I hate not being able to play with him more, but he sticks by. Sleeps when I sleep, eats when I eat. His loyalty astounds me, especially when I’m sick. On Saturday night I had a nightmare that I couldn’t wake out of. When I finally came to, Monty was on his feet, panting next to the bed. I could tell he’d done something, made some noise maybe that woke me up, though I don’t know what. He is my hero. For reals.

By Sunday I was overwhelmed. Everything hurt, every movement was laborious, and any sound above a medium hum felt like a knife through my ear. Just taking a deep breath was hard. Tears poured down my face and I couldn’t say why exactly, except that my thoughts were racing and I felt like I was sinking. My emotions often get erratic during a crash for some reason. I think parts of my brain get overwhelmed. It felt like synapses were firing at rapid rates but were incomplete. Thoughts would come fast but unfinished. I could barely talk straight. I didn’t know what I needed, but I needed help. Enter my mom.

Through the tears I tell her I think I need to eat. OK, she says, and just her voice begins to calm everything down. One thing at a time, she says. Start with the apple. I try to let go and redirect my focus on what’s in front of me: an apple on a plate with almond butter. All I have to do is eat it. I can do that. Cool. The tears come and go. I tell her I’m afraid and my health feels out of control. She listens and validates my discouragement, but doesn’t let me wallow too long into despair. Ever so gently she leads me out of the dark of my own mind and encourages me to keep going. I find myself clinging to those words, scribbling them on paper and my dry erase board. So I try, even though my insides are yelling Stop. Press restart. We’ve got a faulty body here. I sleep at their house on the couch because I’m too exhausted to walk back to mine. I’m thirty years old and my mom ‘tucked me in.’ It’s official: I’m growing up in reverse. Monty sleeps on the love seat next to me. The next day is still sick, but somehow better. I don’t feel buried by it now. My mom has worked her magic again.

The illness continues to teach me humility and gratitude. To find grace through the crappiest of times. It’s still difficult to admit when I need help, but I do. And I’m lucky to have people who provide it. My step-dad bought me groceries, and threw the stick for Monty when I wasn’t able to. I get emails from people who are sick with this and other chronic illnesses but their families don’t believe them or don’t understand, and they’re left to fight it on their own. Reading it is heartbreaking. I don’t know how anyone could survive this illness alone. Some of them say the blog has helped their families understand what they’re going through, and I always told myself if this even helped one person, it was worth the work. I hope I can do more. I wish I could make them know they’re not alone, or crazy, or inferior; all things you feel when you’re sick this way. I know we’re strangers, but we’re human beings and sharing something similar, so if you’re reading this, you’re not alone brother! But sometimes it feels that way and life gets heavy. I get it.

I am trying to be careful about my writing. I always hesitate when sharing an account like this because I don’t want to get stuck in a narrative of how hard life is without going further. Life is hard, but people don’t need that reminder. Life is harder when you stop at the pain. I try to look at the pain as the beginning of something better, not an end. Because life is also amazing, even in times of turmoil, but you have to dig deep, past the muck. It’s so basic, so cliché, but I have to examine both sides or I’ll turn into a blogging version of that Kathy cartoon. Oh God, the horror. It’s a fragile dichotomy, writing this blog. Half of me is sharing what feels like death, but the other half is screaming I’m OK! Everything is fine! Because I am OK. I’m here in my favorite V-neck shirt writing at my desk. But the schism is there and I have to be conscious of both sides. Writing isn’t a way out of it, it’s just a better way through it, if I do it right. I write better when I get creative with my circumstances, until I eventually outgrow them. Otherwise the conditions take over and despair takes the wheel. And that’s a lot of what this whole project is about; becoming more than a person to whom things happen. The poet/writer Paulo Coelho wrote this in The Alchemist,

“We warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.” 

I love this idea and believe it wholly. A lot of things are at work that we don’t always have access to. It’s just easy to forget when shit hits the fan. Well here’s our reminder. 

In other news, it finally happened: I dropped my phone in the pool. Idiot! I watched it fall in slow motion, with that split second of heat on your neck where you think you can reverse time and take it back, but you blink and there it is; Submerged. It’s now drying out in a ziplock bag with rice, so I’m off the grid! I’ll try to use the 48 hours wisely. I’ll keep resting and reading and writing. And hopefully by Christmas I’ll be better and I’ll have found the answer to life. Seems doable.

Anyway, this post is for my mom, who dug me out of the depths once again. She is my mentor and not only guides me out of the darkness but nudges me to be better, to grow stronger from struggle and not be defeated by it. It’s true, if I weren’t sick we wouldn’t be living so close, and I would’ve missed out on a lot of important wisdom that I’ll keep forever. All for free! Thank you for carrying me when I need it but also challenging me to become more than what’s happened. You’re a master and it’s made all the difference.

Health, Happiness, Masters

How To Come Home

Published on by Mary Gelpi6 Comments

I’ve just made it home. My suitcase is still lying in the center of the kitchen floor.

It’s crazy how good home feels after you’ve been away from it, even when you’ve completely enjoyed your time away. Somewhere between waiting in line barefoot among rookie fliers who somehow forgot about the jug of water in their carry-on and the captain shouting God knows what into that fuzzy speaker, I start to feel my humanity slip like some kind of sock with lazy elastic hovering at the ankle.

Once upon a time, flying made me feel like a celebrity. The whole experience was a novelty and a privilege.  And somewhere in my jaded depths I know that it still is. The mere idea of humans taking flight on a bus in mid-air is still mesmerizing and I’m lucky to have access to it. And yet somehow,  the only celebrity I ever feel like is Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents. I’m all eye rolls and discouraged sighs, which sometimes emerge as a laugh–the kind of laugh you let out when nothing is actually funny. I try to keep my moans of discontent in, even when the automatic toilet flushes while I’m still on it and I’m sprinkled with fresh public toilet water. I try to breathe through the frustration of then not getting that same toilet to flush when I actually want it to and there I am dancing like some kind of monkey on fire trying to activate the motion detector that says just wave your hand to activate. It lies. I exit, I don’t care. I hate the toilet now. All I want to do is wash the Ebola off my hands and possible STD’s off my thighs, but the faucet requires the motion. And the soap requires a motion. And the dryer requires a motion. And what happened to handles? If I went on Shark Tank I’d reintroduce handles to public bathrooms. Anyway there is more dancing. More erratic behavior from inanimate objects. More laughing when it’s not funny. It’s like the DMV in there; the threat level of a Stage 5 freakout is just one toilet flush away in any given stall. You can sense it.

But not everyone confronts the airport bathroom circus. The old lady next to me doesn’t seem to have problems with her soap. I bet she’s been spared from the toilet water too. What is your secret, old white lady in the brown velour pant suit? What am I doing wrong? But there’s no time for philosophizing, I have to get to my gate. Guess where my gate is? Guess if it’s nearby or at the very far edge of the airport as in it has a separate zip code and everything. Guess.

Is it the tragedy that is modern American air travel that makes home feel this good? Maybe. Probably. I guess this account of flying would suggest I’m a young, old curmudgeon who has lost sight to how lucky I am.  But it’s always temporary. I am either going somewhere great or coming home to relief and love, and it’s just the in-between antics that can get a girl down. Once home nobody shouts the temperature and the toilets flush WHEN YOU WANT THEM TO. Of course, an 80 pound furry beast running around you in circles then through your legs and back, shoving every toy in the box in your lap and wagging his tail with enough vigor to knock over small children and feeble adults, well, that helps too. That’s the best.

I celebrated Thanksgiving with my best friend big brother Nick and Company in Miami for a week. Mostly I felt like death, but I was excited to go and the change in scenery did me good. It’s been a rocky few months. My health declined from mediocre to poor without discernible reason, and that’s just the name of the game with illness like this. I can’t pretend I’m not discouraged by it or tired of feeling really shitty when I didn’t overdo it or change anything, as if a person deserves bad health anyway, but I’m trying not to wallow in it either. I saw the specialist in Miami and there are a few changes we are making, but we won’t know more until the results arrive from the copious amount of blood I gave to test. Aside from that, my progressive boyfriend and I broke up. Ew, breakups.

It’s interesting that a decision you’re sure of it’s the right one to make can be just as painful as the wrong ones you’ve made when you didn’t know any better. And by interesting I mean shitty. We did the adult thing and “called it” at the appropriate time. We saved ourselves the tragedy of letting it slowly burn and die until it ended in hatred. I guess ultimately, even an amicable breakup is still a breakup. It’s an end. You grieve for them and you grieve for who you were with them. I experienced a whole new pain this time around that stemmed from not being my whole self in the endeavor. I pretended and concealed when the truth was ugly or getting a less than desirable response. I don’t think Id ever done that In a relationship before, but I’ve never been under the circumstances I am now and had to introduce someone knew to a world that took so much explaining, and defending in some cases.

It’s weird, I actually wanted to keep my illness out of the whole thing. (I wanted to live in Neverland, is how that sentence should read.) I had this fear it would interfere with things before they ever had a shot to develop. I feared it would be difficult and unbecoming; It would suggest I was someone inferior. I was even afraid it might be the demise of the relationship. And then, it kind of was. The weight of it became too heavy, it’s unrelenting nature became too repetitive and it’s lack of a solution wore out the seams and we broke. There were other reasons, of course. But my being sick was up there, it messed with things, it was a big a part of the end. And for a while that was a really crushing thought. It made me feel small, made my life feel lesser. I push and work to live my life in spite of this invisible force trying to take it away, and yet sometimes, it still comes out on top. It wins.

But hiding it was like doing a monkey dance in a cramped bathroom stall. (Kind of) It was stupid on top of exhausting, and I don’t know how I expected anything authentically good to emerge when I wasn’t being true to myself. I am not my illness, I know that. But it’s there, it’s changed virtually everything in my life the last four years, and nothing good has ever come from denying or dismissing it; from pretending it’s not there. And yet, sometimes I can sense that people want me to pretend it’s not there. They want to hear that I’m better, and no one understands that fantasy more than me. But pretending makes me feel like I have to hide a part of my life that I can’t control, and that’s not a healthy place to be. I don’t want long conversations about my illness. Ive had enough of them for 20 lifetimes. But I do need an honest atmosphere that doesn’t require apology. I need to be able to be sick when I’m sick and well when I’m well and not judged inbetween. It will always take patience, compassion and effort in order for my life to be understood and loved from the outside. It will always be hard in my relationships. But hopefully if I am really seen, my external circumstances won’t take up so much space. And that was half the problem, I never really felt seen. Instead I felt sorry, and that’s because I betrayed myself. By not putting it all out there, I made it nearly impossible for my life to make sense.  I am not jobless and living in my parents pool house writing on a blog called Twenty Five Pills a Day because of lifestyle choices. And that’s an attitude I confront a lot. I’ll work like hell my whole life to turn lemons into lemonade, but I didn’t pick the lemons, so I don’t think I need to apologize for that anymore. The weird thing is that in glossing over and skirting around this small part of me, so much more of who I am was stifled. Good parts! Fun parts! It doesn’t feel good not to bring your whole self to a party. In fact, that hurt the worst, and I did it to myself. I had a need that wasn’t getting met, and instead of accepting that once I knew it was true, I tried to do away with the need. Surprise surprise, that didn’t work. It’s OK to have needs. Love enjoys needs.

Now I am Stella getting my groove back. I see my health in the distance: a ship in flames slowly sinking into the ocean. Haha. That image makes me laugh. But this will pass. I’ll get better. Or I’ll get worse, then I’ll get better. It doesn’t matter, because I’m going to keep trying. I’ll attempt to transform all of this– pain, pleasure, toilet water– into something useful. Something fun. Because despair is boring and I’m seeking a creative life. The world doesn’t need more sad stories so I will find the good ones. I’ll trust what I’ve been given and let it fuel all my endeavors. Mostly I’ll breathe easier because I am who I am and I’ve made it home. I’m back. And I have so much to do.

Stay tuned.

Health, Happiness, Home.

Technical Difficulty Please Stand By

Published on by Mary Gelpi10 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I lost my head. It happens sometimes.

I call it spaghetti brain and it occurs when I’m in a crash or when I’ve overdone it for too long. I knew I was pushing myself a little too hard because I ended up in a push/crash cycle that typically doesn’t end well. My body continued to give out, and I continued to push until finally my mind followed suit. I had a stressful few weeks and my mental agility dulled until I could hardly say my own name out loud without stumbling over it. It’s difficult to explain, but when these cognitive issues flare up, trying to think and listen and speak makes me feel like a car with the gas and the break petals pressed to the floor at the same time. My thoughts come fast but fragmented; the words pile up on the tip of my tongue, tumble over one another, and then emerge in random order with a lot of stuttering in between. Half of the time the wrong words come out altogether. My brain feels like it’s on fire, and a few times I’ve had to just sit in a dark quiet room to extinguish the mental chaos and regain my sensory composure.

.
.

Besides writing and speaking like a fumbling drunk geriatric, my sense of hearing becomes extremely heightened and over-sensitive. It’s as though a sensory filter was removed and now all sound is allowed in at the same level: loud. It’s extremely difficult to hold a conversation if there is any background noise like television, or if other people are speaking nearby. For whatever reason, talking on the phone turns into a strained task, and often the sound against my ear can become jarring. I feel unable to focus on what’s in front of me, and as a result all sounds merge together and all I hear is incomprehensible noise. Sometimes I feel held hostage to some kind of sensory overload, where sights and sounds almost compete against each other and become so overwhelming that my skin starts to crawl. Suddenly I can feel all my clothes touching my skin, and it’s very irritating. That happened at the coffee shop a few days ago; the music playing in the background and the two girls talking next to me and the glare of my computer screen suddenly engulfed my mind and I felt paralyzed. I’m sure it was fun for outsiders to watch me suddenly go a little nuts, throw everything in a bag and run out of there as though I were on fire. But hey, I’m happy if I can be of any entertainment.

I haven’t written much about the cognitive effects from CFS, but I really should have. This last month has been an alarming reminder of just how crippling it can get. It’s a total disruption on your everyday life, and were I working right now I think I’d surely be fired. I remember when these strange symptoms began when I first became sick at age nine. Suddenly the sound of the vacuum became intolerably loud. As in painfully loud. The same went for hair dryers and the radio in the car and even washers and dryers. It’s not a constant state of agitation, but like the other symptoms, when I’ve done too much, it gets ignited and wreaks some major havoc. Sometimes it lasts a few hours, others a few weeks. But usually with time and rest the mental cloud clears and things improve. This week is already a lot better than last, and I think it’s because I’ve had a lot of solitude and allowed myself to really rest. But still, it’s there, mixing up my word order and making it really difficult to speak in complete sentences. Trying to talk to people when these symptoms flare up is like trying to cook in a really dirty kitchen, with dishes piled in sink and sticky gunk on the counters and no clean utensils. Am I making sense? The point is, it’s messy up there. Cluttered. Jammed.

I laugh at the thousands of words I’ve written in the last few weeks and what a literary disaster they’ve turned out to be. I read over my words at night and find myself scratching out entire pages because they’re all over the place, incongruent, and in general just not up to par. I’d be lying if I said all this didn’t scare me a little, especially because writing has always been something I could do despite being sick. To see that nothing is really safe from the CFS monster is unnerving, and it’s been frustrating to feel held back this way. But I haven’t lost hope. I know it will improve as I continue to rest, as it’s improved before, and I wanted to at least let it be known that I’m not dead, I’ve just temporary lost my ability to communicate properly. It’s not like I’m a writer or anything and that kind of thing matters. :/ ANYWAY, In place of writing I learned some Timberland on guitar and made some drawings of Monty. They’re not very good.

At any rate, I expect my head to recover from the spaghetti state soon, and I’ll be back to catch up with the world once I’m more able. I appreciate the patience as I await my brain. In the meantime, you can read more about the science behind spaghetti brain in people with CFS here and here. Catch yall on the flip side.

Health, Happiness, and a Cognitive Catastrophe

Girls in the Fall

Published on by Mary Gelpi6 Comments

Something happens to girls in the Fall.

It begins faintly around mid-August, once the novelty of summer has rusted to near hatred, and the first few harbingers of Fall reveal themselves, however slight, that our frenzied wait begins. We Southern girls must wait the longest. Not until the rest of the country has surpassed Autumn fully en route to Winter will our Fall truly begin. But wait we will, masterfully preparing (boot shopping) for those dropping temperatures, sometimes near the fifties!

Is it the wait that induces our frenzy? Our DNA? Some primordial leftovers from crafting our loincloths into something warmer, adding fur both protectively and just maybe, because it looked cute on our cave husbands? I don’t know. But no doubt, when those pre-season football whistles begin to blow and that JCREW catalog arrives with its Fall Preview showcasing wispy stick women coddled in cardigans among orangish woodsy backgrounds, it’s over. Fuhgetaboutit.

Like this.
Like, what is even happening here? I like it.

 

Do I want pumpkin shit in my coffee? No. Not even a little. But I don’t mind the deluge of pumpkin flavoring making its way into thousands of consumeable items, because its meaning surpasses flavor. In the Fall Fantasy, it means sweaters and scarves. Do you know the seratonin-dopamine discotque that breaks out in my brain when I hear the words Sweater Weather!? Do you know how exciting those infinity scarves are? Do I wear infinity scarves? Nooo, and yet somehow that didn’t stop me from browsing about 1,400 of them online, salivating at their patterns and the thought that some girl out there will be wearing them and she will look fantastiko, DID IT? How could I be psyched for strangers wearing an accessory I don’t? Um, I dunno. It’s what I mean about girls in the Fall. It goes on..

It means FOOTBALL and something to “do” on Sundays, in your pajamas if you want! It means Red Beans and Rice and soup and STEW. Group text shit-talking and creative/perverted Fantasy Football names. It means PLAID SHIRTS PEOPLE. It means wedding season and chic Fall dresses. It means campfires and that smell on your clothes. Pea-coats and tea and brisk walks in the park. It means your boyfriend looking cute in a grey hoodie sweatshirt. And kissing in the cold, and how for some reason it’s different–warmer, better.

Of course it conjures up the Holidays too, which is another fever all on its own, with very similar symptoms. Just the idea gets my Fall heart pumping! I can smell the live Christmas tree now. There’s no thought of Holiday realities that include the misery of modern American Air Travel and family freakouts or that time I got too drunk during Scattergories and dropped those F bombs in front of concerned adults. These fluttery dreams, even if they are illusions, are at least half the fun. They don’t include conflicts or drunken meltdowns. They do include fancy Holiday parties (never go to any) and sparkly dresses to wear and kissing your love under mistle toe! Have I done these things? No! Does that matter? No! It matters that I could, and the Gap commercials always make it seem highly likely. I even look forward to Holiday commercials! Jeez mahn.

But what I’m truly getting at here is something that invades and consumes the female brain. I may be entering sexist territory here, but I confront it every year–Among friends, on TV, at strangers in the store, at groups of girls at Football games, and within myself. It’s a necessity. (Wait no it isn’t) It’s an industry. It’s huge. It’s had us salivating for months, on the constant lookout, thinking strategically about our approach. There’s a method to it. It’s what the season is all about. It’s what makes the world round.

It’s fucking boots yall.

This all comes down to boots. We’re surrounded and tempted by images and advertisements and boutique windows whispering to us Boots. There’s boots in here. Step inside and be somebody in boots. And there’s so many options. So many ways to go. An obviously unnecessary amount of ways to go. But the boot phenomena is not about need. We’re deep in the Fall Fairy Tale now. Here is our Knight in Shining Armor. Only he’s wearing sassy new BEWTS. This is what made the intolerable heat worth it. Our rescue. Our romance. Our savior. It’s boots. Of every color and every kind.

grey-et-al-is-wishing-for-fall-boots
Boots!

You need a casual brown or beige boot as the versatile go-to. You need rubber snow or rain boots. You need a dressier, heeled black boot. You might throw in a casual flat black as well, depending on your chosen purse color for a while. You’ll need a lace up black one for the edgy but casual Fall outfit. And you’ll definitely require a few different “booties” for various outfits. A heeled black suede or velvet. (Can be worn with pants or a Fall romper or skirt for a night out) (I don’t go out) A neutral flat ankle boot, to wear with a rolled up skinny pant or casual floral daywear dresses. There’s the classic riding boot to go with skinnies and the aforementioned plaid shirt. Or leggings and an oversized Grandfather sweater. You could do the over-the-knee boot too, to fierce up your look, dressy or casual. You may throw in a grey ankle boot, to be worn with an array of colors and can transition between black and brown. THERE’S JUST SO MANY. And we love them all.

It weirds me out and embarrasses me how exciting boots can be and a part of me

Oh God.
Oh God.

Sorry what? I got distracted by this pretty platter of ankle boots. Anyway it just sort of disturbs me how

Give it to me baby
Give it to me baby

What? God, see? This is what I mean..I just got lost looking at this melange of boots and what wearing a few of them will say about me, and whether I’m comfortable with that message should I wear them. Anyway look, I feel a little ashamed right now that I’ve even devoted writing this long with a buildup that landed on boots. There are realer things to talk about. Like things that matter. And I intend to get there. But I couldn’t be helped. This fever set it me a while ago and I’ve been playing it cool, but my eyes were cast on Fall months ago and I could no longer hide all the feelings it conjured up and my weird excitement for plaid. And cardigans. And kissing in cold weather. And BEWTS. Duh.

There’s this part of Fall which mimics the thrill of Christmas. It’s the anticipation. It’s imagining all the fun you’ll have. All the parties you’ll go to. And how great you’ll look doing it. IN YOUR BOOTS OF COURSE. I have no idea if any of this happens in the male brain. Doubtful. Anyway, Is all this a little narcissistic with inflated versions of self and broaching on being so vain you probably think this blog is about you? Yeah, it is. But I think it’s OK to venture into a Fairy Tale a while. But truth be told, Fall is beautiful and I find romance in so many parts of it. And in Louisiana we really do await its arrival a long time. I can’t even be sure it’s here yet exactly. But I can tell you it’s 90 degrees outside today and the humidity is low, and I’m about to play with Monty outside. But first I’ll change into a plaid shirt I bought months ago and some boots that make me happy. Because it’s Fall yall! It’s close enough. It’s nearly Christmas morning.

Heath, Happiness, Fall. Boots.

 

 

Can’t Touch That

Published on by Mary Gelpi5 Comments

I write this from the floor. My knees are scrunched up in front of me and my caps serve as wrist stands. I’d write at my desk–it’s literally called a writing desk–but I can’t sit there long before my neck goes out which causes a headache which causes a sad face. Like this :( That’s exactly how I look when I’m feeling bad, if you were wondering.

Today I woke up feeling rough. Rougher than usual. Still, this is nothing new, and I’ve learned how to let go of plans and make myself useful in other ways from bed. But I was impatient today. I had things on the to-do list that I wanted to tackle and I couldn’t. I confront this a lot, but today it made me mad.

I’ve been trying to make some changes in my life: health-wise and beyond. I’ve been proactive about eating better and since some recent lab work detected gluten anti-bodies in my gut, I’ve cut that out. I don’t miss it that much, in fact it’s high time to go without it. Gluten free is so trendy right now! It’s just that I’ve never liked when people are picky at restaurants. And now I’m that girl, ordering the burger without the bun and asking the ingredients of sauces. Oh well.

Besides the diet, which I’m still configuring, I’ve begun organizing closets and getting rid of excess anything and attempting to follow some type of schedule. There’s catharsis in things like this, but they can prove to be difficult and today is the perfect example of why.

Yesterday I cleaned out this closet in the living room, which has somehow collected my nieces baby clothes, my ex-boyfriends computer, a guitar with a missing string, and THREE brooms among other miscellaneous clutter. Throwing junk away can be a holy experience, and I was beaming throwing excesses out. After that I went to the bookstore to check out a few recommendations from a friend. I found them and then walked around a while. I like the atmosphere there and the quiet way people speak. Then I went to the grocery store for a few things that turned out to be a lot of things. My legs were burning by the time I got home and I knew I’d probably overdone it. (Wuss) But I was in my Martha Stewart zone, or something. When I began to put away groceries I noticed that the fridge could use some cleaning. I took everything out, pitched half of it, washed the drawers in the hot soapy water, wiped everything down well, then stocked it. Admittedly I sat there and opened and closed the door a few times just to relive the magic of my newly pristine fridge. I was done around 10:30.

The truth is I didn’t do that much. And that’s the ticket! You don’t have to do that much in order to feel this bad the next morning. It feels like you ran a marathon on a whim and at the end a bunch of people gathered around and kicked you for no reason. Dicks. When I sat down I realized my whole body hurt and my mild migraine I had all day had turned into a full-blown one. I took some of my 25 pills, then my nighttime pills, read a little and went to sleep. I slept pretty rough, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

When I awoke the next morning to the pool guy knocking on the glass door I felt the way Gary Busey looks.

Good Morning!
Good Morning!

I could barely get my eyes to open fully by the time I got to the door. I’m sure I looked like a zombie in pink pajamas. Anyway, all the “overdid it” symptoms were back. Achy, dizzy, heavy and the worst of them all: weakness. Because there’s nothing to do for that except wait it out. And that’s especially hard to do when looking at the list I’d optimistically made yesterday of all these tasks that needed crossing off. I really wanted to clean out my clothing closet, and sort through medical bills. You know, fun stuff! They would have to wait.

The thing is, it’s OK. This is how the illness works and I overdid it, just as I’ve done hundreds of times before. I’ve learned plenty of ways to make the day count from the couch. I’ll rest and improve over the next few days and remember that compared to the past, this is truly small potatoes. I don’t write the details of my day to whine or seek pity, but to show what a huge disruption the illness can be. It feels like I am always playing catch up with the rest of the world, and this is probably why. I just tried to plan two days and it went off track. There is such a huge variable to consider and it’s often anyones guess, so sticking to things is a guessing game. Beyond that, I write because I’m still trying to figure out how to do this. How to have a fulfilling life, one that I am proud of, without upsetting the sleeping sick dragon inside me. It feels like a continual conundrum, and maybe it always will be.

Life keeps changing and I constantly have to re-mold how to live it. I am in a new relationship which is great. But it’s also a new challenge. Introducing him into my weird sick life has been difficult on both ends. The illness is confusing, my life lacks structure and the circumstances just aren’t normal. I forget that my life requires explanation, even defense sometimes. In the beginning, I loved the escape I felt meeting someone new who didn’t know me as a sick person. It’s like visiting a place you’ve never been before and feeling like you can be anyone because no one knows your past. I thought we could keep going without having to confront it seriously. That was stupid. But it felt good to me, good I hadn’t felt in a while, and I went with it. Obviously that approach dissolved and at some point we both had to face the music.

I don’t always consider that to outsiders, my life isn’t normal. I forget that most people aren’t sick. They don’t have to take a bunch of pills in order for their bodies to do what they’re supposed to. They can go to work, attend social outings, fall asleep on their own at night, and wake up and do it again. Something I did once but now I am in awe of. I forget that being sick effects other people, not just me. I realized that being continuously ill and taking pills all the time can make other people uncomfortable. But the truth is it does, and that’s OK too.

I think the hard part for partners of sick people is that they feel helpless. They are constantly reminded that we’re sick, but there’s not a lot they can do, or say, that will make it better. And that can wear on a person, as much as it wears on us to be sick. In my case, the healing doesn’t come from words. Nothing they can say will fix it. It’s more a matter of being there– sometimes a hug, holding my hand, or just laying together, feeling the warmth of someone else’s humanness, and yelling LIFE IS HARD BUT IT’S OK! Figuring it out and adapting to what life with chronic illness means isn’t very easy, but it continues to provide me a lesson in surrender, for those around me, too. Sitting with the pain and accepting circumstance and just allowing the moment.

I think the thing to remember is that even though illness interrupts plans and SQUASHES OUR FUN SOMETIMES, it really can’t take away the ethereal, elusive thing that makes each of us specifically human. We are still who we are underneath all that moaning (I find I sigh a lot) and illness can’t touch that. In fact I think if we try really hard and lean in deep to our experience, we’ll find it can make us an even better version of ourselves. I forget it sometimes during dark days, but somewhere in my depths I know it to be true.

Health, Happiness, and Ultra Clean Closets