The Heart of Life

Waking up each morning, I wonder how I will conquer another day with intense excruciating pain.  I get up, mask the pain and prove that I can make it through.             

In the blink of an eye my life turned upside down.  My life was great.  I was on top of the world; honor roll, student council officer, school student of the year, an athlete, enjoying plenty of friends.  Then, on September 25, 2003, I woke up with a torturous headache that would not go away.  Over the next seven years, I would be treated by some fifty doctors, endure two surgeries, spend fifteen weeks in hospitals, miss most of my eighth, ninth, and tenth grade years, and live with an incessant agonizing pain that continues to this day. 

My life immediately turned into endless time spent in doctor’s offices, hospitals, and dark quiet rooms.  No one knew what was wrong, or where the pain was coming from.  Every doctor told me he or she would be able to take the pain away, but each time I eventually heard “I’m so sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you.”  For months, I had drugs poured into me and I was spaced out.  Everything from Tylenol to morphine was put into my body.  After an exploratory surgery with no results, the next step seemed to be traveling 700 miles to Michigan to see the best neurologists in the country.  After spending three weeks in a hospital, the baffled doctors didn’t know what else to do and released me.  I was terrified.  Would the pain be there forever?  Was this the way the rest of my life would be?  I was determined not to let it take over my existence.  I had to fight through and live my life. 

The remainder of my sophomore year I wrestled with the pain and did everything I could to get through school.  I went to two classes a day, had a homebound teacher come to my house, and took online classes.  I was determined to get my education and graduate with my high school class.

Right when I thought I was getting up the mountain, I fell all the way back down.   Hurricane Katrina hit and the barometric pressure changes sent me right back into the hospital for a month.  I was back to drugs in my IV 24/7 and dark, quiet rooms.  Every scan imaginable was taken multiple times, with everything turning out normal.   The neurologists agreed the pain was real and it frustrated them because they couldn’t find a cause.  I decided I had to force my way through the pain learn to live the best life I could. 

While it was extremely hard, I made it through full days of school my junior year and was able to experience a very normal senior year.  Graduating on time, with honors from high school and going to Mercer were some of my proudest moments. 

I do everything I can to stay positive and have a happy life.  I hide my pain and try to live like a regular college student.  I have learned we all have challenges and that we all have to make the best of our situations.  Although nothing has helped so far, I continue to look for answers.  Every day I wake up with my headache, but am grateful that I’m succeeding in school and my daily life.  Knowing that I was able to get through this time in my life when most people doubted me, makes me believe that with enough determination, I can get through anything.  

First of all, I don’t do relationships.  I never have and just the thought of being in one scares me to death.  I have dated people before, but after about a month and a halfish, I always find something that I don’t like and I leave.  This routine has happened many times now and I always thought that I was really bad at picking guys and it took about that long to realize what they were really like.  I would find their annoying little quirks and then talk myself out of liking them and give up on the idea of dating them any longer.  This process has always been very easy for me because I am not the kind of girl who has to have someone there.  I love being single. I have some of the most amazing friends that I can tell anything to and can be around all the time and have always thought that as long as I am in college, this easy lifestyle would work.  However, for the last month I have been dating someone and have been having a lot of fun and have been very comfortable with everything.  My problem is that I am approaching the month and a half mark that is my moment to leave, but this time im not sure I want to.  I can’t find the little things that annoy me and make me run and I can’t even talk myself out of liking him (which I am usually VERY good at).  This time the thing that is scaring me isn’t about being in relationship, but it is more about the unknown of what he is thinking and being terrified of getting hurt.  

I had a realization last week while working out.  I do my best thinking on the elliptical when I forget my ipod and have to entertain myself for thirty minutes with just the thoughts in my head.  That morning I was writing my digital story about my headache and everything that I had gone through with that.  Thinking about my story gave me an epiphany of why I am so afraid of getting hurt.  From the time I got my headache until I gave up on drugs, I had no control over my body.  Any doctor who thought they had a shot at getting me better was allowed to pour drugs into me and try anything that they felt could help.  For three years straight I had no control over by body or what was done to it.  The drugs were so strong that I didn’t even have control of my thoughts or feelings.  I think that having been in this state for such a long time numbed me.  I am able to do about anything without putting very much feeling into it.  I do not get sad easily and simply just do not care about very much.  This makes me sound like a depressed and mean person, but I am really the opposite.  Even though I don’t care and don’t get feelings involved in much of my life, I am a genuinely happy person.  I can find the best of any situation and like most people.  The thing that I can not do it talk about my new feelings for this new guy and I am so afraid of ever giving him these feelings.  I have never been so scared of loosing someone and it is very weird for me to care like this.  I over analyze everything lately and am trying so hard to chill myself out so that I don’t care anymore.  It isn’t working.  I am so confused with what I want and can’t decide if I should just say screw it and leave and go back to only worrying about myself or work at getting these feelings out and give this a shot.  What to do? I don’t know.  For now I am going to go to the library and take my mom’s advice and try to find a new formal date.  Maybe finding someone new will be just the thing I need to help me decide what my true feelings are.  

Well, after dealing with my crazy thoughts and ideas in my head for way too long, I have decided to try some blogging to just let it out.  I haven’t really done any writing in years so the likely hood that I will keep up with this or that it will even be somewhat decent is slim to none.  However, for the time being, I thought this would be a great way for me to talk things out with myself and try to figure out what I really want and need in life.  

It may be that I am getting old, but for some reason I have been having a crisis about my life for the entirety of this semester.  I have always prided myself of being a very calm, chill, and stress-free individual, yet I can not seem to calm myself down like I usually do.  My life has begun to go in a different direction than I originally planned and while I am ok with the fact that it is changing, I am having a hard time figuring out what to do with these changes and what they mean.  I am in a new major that I love, but knowing that graduating with a business degree in this economy does not lead to a good job market freaks me out! One of the things that attracted me to engineering was the thought of having a stable job right out of school.  I couldn’t be happier that I got out of engineering, but having to deal with the low GPA caused by the dreadful differential equations, statics, and chemistry makes me wonder how my transcript will look to companies.  I know that I still have a year and a half in Stetson, which should lead to good grades, but the thought of applying for internships this year and full-time, big girl jobs in just over a year is something that I can’t seem to take my mind off of.  

This is working out better than I had imagined it to when I started this post ten minutes ago.  Maybe you will hear from me again and get to see more of the crazy in my head…there is so much more! Just getting these thoughts out and written down comforts me a little bit and makes them more manageable. 

Thank you blogging for relaxing me enough to go to bed now.  Good night!