Letting Go
It’s a funny old thing; life. What’s funnier is how things can change in a flash and everything you thought you knew and wanted from it takes a dramatic turn, but then again that’s what chronic illness does; changes everything.
When I was younger I wanted my future to consist of the stereotypical life really, a successful job earning good money, a place of my own, marriage and a couple of kids to boot. Yet here I am at the age of 32 with none of those things and now all I want for my future is just that; a future.
I was in my late twenties when I was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia and CFS. Like most people I had spent several years being unwell with constant trips to the doctors ending with them telling me I was stressed. I don’t deny I was stressed, I had a high pressured role in a HR department but I was good at what I did, what I felt was different to the bog standard stress of work. I was ill, all of the time, whether at work in the week or at home at the weekends – I just couldn’t escape it. After multiple absences from work, each one increasing in time scales, my ability to function was getting more and more difficult and it was with a heavy heart I left my job. It was around a month later after many hospital trips I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia and CFS weren’t the first diagnoses I received in my life, as at the age of 18 I was diagnosed with kinetic Tourettes syndrome. Living with Tourettes I already knew about living with an illness that didn’t gel with treatment, but that didn’t stop me believing there would be a cure or at least a treatment plan for fibro. I was in the prime of my life, surely there had to be something I could do to get my life back the way I knew it, surely there was more than this?
Whilst the physical symptoms of chronic illness at times can be debilitating, it was and still very much is at times the mental side of things that have been the biggest pill to swallow. For the four years or so after my diagnosis I fought against it, unable to except this was my new life. A life that consisted of being constantly exhausted where every simple task seemed to be a mammoth mission, a life that I hated and most of all I hated myself for. Once upon a time my achievement for the week would have been completing a chapter in my dissertation or organising multiple training events for high-end managers and now my biggest achievement was leaving the house every few days to get my vitamin D.
I wanted the life I had before my illness, the one that was able to work and have responsibility, the one where people saw me as someone and not just that girl who thinks she is ill (because let’s face it even with a diagnosis people still don’t believe there is anything wrong with you). My desire for my old life was so strong I went back to work, convincing myself that it was work that had been the problem and by making small changes it would solve everything. So I changed my workplace, the hours and the level of work I was doing and my worst nightmare came true because nothing changed, in fact I just got worse, my body couldn’t cope and I felt like a failure. I felt irritated with my body for just not getting on with life and carrying on like everyone else around me. I had pushed myself because I was in denial and I was grieving for the life I once had but more than that, I was grieving for the future I had planned.
They say there are five stages of grief; denial, anger, sadness, bargaining and acceptance. For most of my grief regarding my illness I have lived in the denial stage, I didn’t want to believe this was my life and that my future would have to be altered in order to cope with it. Anger and sadness have been emotions that I have dealt with since my diagnosis and by trying to go back to work I was trying to bargain with myself what my limitations really are. Even with my future plans I had tried holding on to the notion that if I could just adjust things slightly in myself then I would still be able to have the life I wanted, achieve the goals that I had. The only problem with that being the life that I wanted and the goals that I had, were now too big a reach with a body that doesn’t play ball. So what now?
“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one” – McMillian
People talk about acceptance like you can grab it in an instance and suddenly everything is better but it’s much harder than that. Having people tell you to accept your condition makes you want to scream in their face that if it was that easy why have can’t I do just that? Acceptance is there waiting for you to embrace it but only when you are ready to do so. I accepted the fact I was ill fairly early on in my health journey but it has taken me 6 years to accept I have to let go of my old life in order to move on with my new.
With this in mind I wanted to share with you my top tips for letting go:
1. Learn to value yourself –The ability to let go will only stem from an understanding that the life you once had is no longer healthy for the life you are now living. To understand this, you have to listen to your body’s needs and respect them. By doing this you have to value yourself and believe you become above everything else in your life no matter what.
2. Learn about your conditions and the impact on your health – With fibro it is very easy to bury your head in the sand and refuse to get to grips with it, but knowledge is power. By researching your condition and your symptoms, it can actually teach you things that the doctors can’t and that’s how by continuing in the same patterns can really affect your health. Many medical people will encourage you to keep going as you are, not understanding that it the keep going mentality which makes you symptoms worsen.
3. Write a gratitude list – When our lives change it is really easy to focus on the things we have lost rather than the things we still have or have learnt. By writing a gratitude list of the things you are grateful in your life; it can help to shift the dark clouds that may have gathered. Even writing about fairly basic things, such as being grateful for the air you breathe or the ability to hear, can start to make you see that although you have left things behind, you still have things in your life to feel good about.
4. Take each day at a time – In my experience the second I start thinking too much to the future, it is then I digress and start reminiscing about the life I have lost before bargaining with myself. Therefore to stop this pattern happening I try to take one day at a time to avoid overthinking.
5. Set yourself new goals – To let go of your old goals is extremely difficult especially if they were something you really wanted to accomplish. By setting new goals you are still giving yourself a focus and you can alter them in line with what is important to you now. Rather than focusing on big future goals, you could now set yourself smaller day to day goals which are not only easier to reach but still give you the sense of achievement you craved in your old life.
6. Speak to someone – It is all very well making the decision to carve out this new life and kiss goodbye to the old without a care in the world but that’s only if you don’t care. If externally you seem fine but internally you are a wreck, unable to come to terms with your loss then the best medicine is speaking your truth. Whether it be someone you trust, or a counsellor talking to someone honestly about your emotions regarding your loss will help you to let it go. If talking to someone is really out the question then write it down and get your feelings out on paper, just as long as it is out of your head.
Cry if you need to cry, be mad, be sad but remember to be proud of yourself too because by letting go you are accepting who you are – fibro and all.