beyond the yellow tape

Recent­ly, a friend emailed and play­ful­ly chas­tised me for not updat­ing my blog late­ly. “How am I sup­posed to know what you are up to?” she kid­ding­ly asked. I laughed and we sched­uled a cof­fee (aka soy milk) date, but it all struck me as odd. The blog posts have always flowed nat­u­ral­ly — both when to write and the con­tent to dis­cuss, so it has nev­er been some­thing I have real­ly “sched­uled” in the past. I have learned through this jour­ney that writ­ing, for me, is cathar­tic. It is a way for me to sort out my emo­tions and plans, as well as a means of con­nec­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with my fam­i­ly and friends. So the fact that I had­n’t been writ­ing, and had­n’t even noticed, was a lit­tle odd.

It dawned on me lat­er that I had been sub­con­scious­ly avoid­ing this blog. I had been shy­ing away because I did­n’t have any­thing pos­i­tive or excit­ing to share, and that made me feel like a fraud. When I start­ed this blog, I com­mit­ted to shar­ing my jour­ney. All of my jour­ney. Which means it would be hyp­o­crit­i­cal if I did­n’t share my strug­gles along with my tri­umphs. You see, 99% of the time I am able to approach life in a pos­i­tive and con­fi­dent man­ner, know­ing that I can take a deep breath and han­dle what­ev­er comes my way. I laugh and I joke and I take com­fort just know­ing that this is how I cope. It’s who I am and who I’ve always been. I find being miserable…well…miserable and I want noth­ing to do with it.

But that does­n’t mean that there aren’t any excep­tions. It does­n’t mean that I can forge ahead of every strug­gle with­out a lit­tle time in the 1%. Even as I’m writ­ing this, I’m bat­tling with the feel­ing of being ashamed of this moment, so this blog post tonight is also my attempt to over­come that feel­ing and let myself be human.

Truth be told, I’m tired.

Like I stand at the bot­tom of the stairs and ques­tion whether or not I have the strength to walk up kind of tired.

And frankly?

I’m tired of being tired.

This entire jour­ney has been about slooooow progress. And while I rec­og­nize that adopt­ing my inner sloth is what my body needs, it isn’t always easy to accept, espe­cial­ly the con­stant back and forth. Ya know, the dance where I take 8 (ridicu­lous­ly slow) steps for­ward, fol­lowed by 7 (ter­ri­fy­ing­ly speedy) steps back. I know too much about my body to ever erase all of my progress and go back to the com­plete begin­ning, but some­times it seems pret­ty darn close.

Before I left for Mayo in Decem­ber, I was, all things con­sid­ered, as healthy as I had been in near­ly two years. I was eat­ing more, doing more and feel­ing like things were real­ly mov­ing for­ward. Then I trav­eled, for med­ical excur­sions and hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions, for 6 weeks. From Vir­ginia to Min­neso­ta to Mass­a­chu­setts to Penn­syl­va­nia to Vir­ginia to Penn­syl­va­nia to Min­neso­ta to Penn­syl­va­nia to Vir­ginia to Penn­syl­va­nia to Virginia.

Right.

So it was no shock to me when I final­ly got home and col­lapsed in a heap. I slept for an insane­ly long time. Over and over again. I rest­ed and juiced and took my plant-based vit­a­mins and did every­thing I could to let my body heal. I had absolute­ly no inter­est in doing any­thing at all…which for a rather gre­gar­i­ous per­son, is usu­al­ly the tell-tale sign that I need to rest. So I did.

But now I’m ready to be recov­ered. And I’m not. In fact, I think I may be the only per­son in Amer­i­ca who dropped five pounds over the hol­i­days and can’t get it back on.

It’s not like I haven’t been here before. I have. Many times. I know the signs — I lose weight, my hair falls out, my nails break, my mus­cles weak­en, I’m exhaust­ed, I feel full after 2 bites of any­thing, yad­da yad­da yadda.

I know the signs of a major relapse.

But it does­n’t make it any eas­i­er to accept.

I know I’ll be ok. I’ll con­tin­ue to do every­thing in my pow­er to get my body healthy. I’ll juice and I’ll exer­cise and I’ll rest and slooooww­ly, I will regain the progress that was lost.

I know that some­day soon I’ll go bound­ing up the stairs again.

But for now, for right this moment, I’m just going to be tired. And that’s ok.