A Message

This morning, I was driving behind a car with a bumper sticker which read, "Trees Are the Answer."

Laying all philosophizing aside, I applied the scientific experiment to the statement.

• Question: My last two days have sucked real REAL bad. Why?
• Answer: Trees

Nope. Doesn't work. Stupid. Stupid.

Then I parked my car in my work parking lot, jumped out of the vehicle, while my phone fell out of my pocket and crashed to the cement. My two month old Blackberry's screen is now busted for the next two years.

Day three and counting. WTF?

Like It. Like It Not.

Lately I’ve been exceedingly conscious of my emotions. Yeah, I know. ME, more alert to my emotions. I assure you it can be a full time job.

Rewind.

I have another daunting birthday approaching this year. Not too quickly but sooner than I’d like.

Without launching into an Oprah tirade about being more and more comfortable in your body (which really does happen), I assert one definitely becomes more aware of one’s self. Your being. Your likes and dislikes. Your emotions.

I haven’t always, but I appreciate the opportunity to have had time to get good and acquainted with myself. Time to make a friend of myself.

Along with this come these opportunities to laugh at yourself and also to embarrass yourself. Yet at the end of the day, I’m left with only me.

Skip to present again.

I’ve been especially aware of my feelings. I have been able to see a situation generating around me and able to call my reaction seconds before it happens as though I were an outsider watching.

I guess THIS is growing up. Becoming alert to your potential self, evaluating its necessity or appropriateness, and then altering your potential self to truly reflect how you would prefer others to receive you.

Following is a very organic recording of some of my emotions in the past week. I guess with good friends and family, you can just out yourself. I’ve written in the ever simple and ever raw outline of likes and dislikes.

· Midday personal contact: If you deal with me at all, you know I work hard and I work long hours. Because of this, I appreciate my personal moments throughout any day, especially midday. I love Mindee’s BB texts, Mary’s updating phone calls, and even listening to Ashley’s screaming children. But Mary really gets me going in the middle of the day. I love midday shout outs.

· Fresh Laundry: I love linens. I have a love affair with sheets and towels. I love fresh laundry. It always feels good to pull fresh sheets and towels out of the dryer. I love washing your white sheets in the hottest temperature your washer will provide, with a cup of bleach, knowing you are killing at least half of the flu off of them. Aww. Clean sheets.

· Emotions: One in particular. Anticipation. Whether it’s good or bad, but particularly when it’s good. Wait. Wait. Wait. Now you can. YES!

· Barnes & Noble: This is my secular church. My sister(s/in-law) go to libraries. I go to B&N. Some days when I feel like I can’t talk to another person, I’ll turn my phone off and go to B&N right after work and not leave until they close. I’m a late blooming book worm and I like it.

· The Sun: I love it.

· The Snow: Go away. I dislike it on April 25th.

· A text for text and a call for call: Even if your response is 24 hours later, I am a true believer in returning what you have received. I dislike when there is a breakdown.

· Know your place: Don’t tell me you love a song more than anyone around you. Especially when I am around you. Especially when you don’t know the words to the song. Especially when you just heard it for the first time a day ago. I heard it last year, when I watched the movie, the night before I downloaded it. I love this song too. Enough to know when it was released. Trite? Yes. Fact? Yes.

· Holidays: Ever since all of my family moved away, I’ve grown to dislike holidays. I hate thinking about where I’m going to go or if I’m going to celebrate them.

· Vehicle Problems: My car is old and always breaking. It VEXES me greatly.

A Forced Surrendering

I sat in the doctor’s office with tears in my eyes. It was one of the few times in my life I was really scared. I had no idea what to think because I just couldn’t come up with any explanation which made sense except I had AIDS.

I didn’t honestly think I had AIDS. I just knew I had something which left me without an immune system. THAT scared me.

A week ago Saturday I noticed it was a little difficult waking up in the morning but didn’t think anything of it because I had no pressing engagement to show me just how exhausted my body had been.

Things turned super strange when I went to Salt Lake to do some shopping with a friend. I almost fell asleep on the 40 minute ride up as though we were doing a cross country road trip, 800 miles into it.

Even then, I chalked it up to having eaten nothing and being on empty. After all, I am the queen of doing this as I frequently pull many long hour days without stopping to eat. (I don’t need a lecture. I’ve been told many times how bad this is for anyone’s body.)

So after three to four hours of walking around perusing Nordstrom’s Rack (hella hot pair of black trousers) and DWS (loved all the shoes so much, I bought none of them), I begged to be taken somewhere to eat. I was going to literally lay down and fall asleep anywhere.

We stopped and I consumed a sandwich. I felt immediately better, I thought. But as we traversed back home, it took literally 10 minutes before I thought I would pass out in the vehicle again.

I was dropped off at home, went upstairs, climbed into bed without removing one stitch and fell asleep.

I awoke confused but felt better. A friend texted me to go to a movie within minutes. I cleaned myself up and headed out. Two and a half hours later, I was home in bed completely fatigued.

Here’s the crazy part. I still wasn’t flagged to the situation… at all.

The indicator came the next morning, Easter morning. My alarm went off to get ready for my 8:30 AM church service.

And THAT’S when I thought someone with a bat had had their way with me while I slept.

I lay there contemplating skipping church due to illness, which was more than justified. Still I knew 90% of the non-regularly attending Christian world would be worshipping today.

It broke my heart to think of not going on Easter. So quite frankly some competitive side of my piety (the irony is not lost on me) ripped my being out of my bed and dressed herself.

I stumbled into church and was asleep within thirty minutes. I assure you I must have been a sight for sore eyes. I slouched passed out in comatose form apparently proving my discipleship to no one but myself.

I left after an hour and went home to, you guessed it, sleep. This is when I first realized I might have mono.

The rest of the symptoms came quickly and in blurred memory.

Monday morning was hell trying to wake for work. I had added strep throat to my illness and some sort of respiratory disease. Tuesday was the same only WORSE. I left work after a measly four hours.

Wednesday I was dead to the world. Every symptom was a trophied win as if a micro-biological Genghis Khan was conquering through me.

After Thursday’s swabbing, I was told I had the flu. THE FLU. And anyone who was following my facebook (the only thing I did while laying in bed sweating and only because I could use my Blackberry) knew I was finding out the hard way why millions of people died from such an epidemic.

I am not a baby when it comes to my sicknesses.

It is more than a week later. I’m draining. I’m healing. I’m running at 60% and I consider it a huge success. It’s been awhile since I’ve remembered how valuable good health is.

Could It Be??

I awoke Monday morning with hives all over my upper torso, my chest, but especially plaguing my neck. The splotchiest, itchiest, cherry rash on my neck. I spent all day trying to eliminate it.

I evaluated a constant mental checklist of what I might have changed to cause this allergic reaction. My constant self barrage proved futile. There was nothing I had done or used differently. I went to bed hoping it would go away by the time I awoke.

Tuesday morning I woke up with the same splotchy, itchy, cherry rash on my neck. This time the cherry was even cherrier and the itchy was even itchier. Visibly obvious, this inflammation was taking center stage in my every personal interaction with anyone.

“Have you used this salve?” “Have you tried that balm?” Ironically, I work at a skin care company and the suggestions poured in steadily. I finally conceded to my boss’s proposal of immediately taking Benadryl.

I was hesitant knowing it was about 2 pm in the middle of a work day and I would get drowsy. Additionally, I knew my work day went from 8 in the morning to at least midnight.

The medicine did nothing to alleviate the rash or the itch. It did, however, administer its lethargic effects upon my being.

There I was, miserable at 5 pm on a snowy Tuesday early evening, head on my desk, and inbox still with 50 emails needing to be reviewed by midnight for end of month.

I walked over to Benefits to submit my final cafeteria plan form for 2008. I had waited until the final day to do so. Upon entrance, my neck became the source of conversation.

“Yeah yeah,” I garbled entirely unamused. I head nodded in agreement while paying little attention to the exchange.

Lost in angst, I blanked until I realized I was being asked a question. My face immediately communicated my disoriented state so she repeated yet again, “are you stressed?”

Allow me a few words to answer this question. Yes. Immensely. Always… yet in an oxymoronically nonchalant way.

While sparing everyone the hum drum, daily living, social history of my stressors, know that Harry and Nancy each gifted to their children an inherent disposition to worry, fret, agonize, and lose sleep over the natural anxieties of life.

While trying to make an insurance claim before deadline, in the middle of our month end chaos, feeling the pressure of occupation, the fog of drugs, and sprinkling in some matters of the heart or heartache, I identified some of my stress.

So when the medication did absolutely nothing for me, I was even more flabbergasted to learn what I had been experiencing with this outbreak had less to do with a physiological reaction and more to do with a psychosomatic manifestation.

As a product of my family, this was unfeasible. We don’t get sick. We sure don’t get sick from our minds. I had spent two days trying to rid myself of the ailment which had been the source of uncanny constant discomfort.

Then this morning, I woke up. As abruptly as it appeared did it suddenly disappear. I was left with a souvenir of dry flakey in skin in an area I had spent trying not to scratch the past couple of days.

Hmmm…