Struggling with fear.

I need to have a talk with myself about my attitude lately. I have been overly critical of myself, doing a lot of negative self-talk, and judging myself in ways I would never do with others. I blamed myself for getting glutened from a restaurant last week, blamed myself for high and low blood sugars that I'm currently experiencing, chastised myself for not being able to walk 30 minutes on the treadmill without pain in my spine. I'd hear a voice barking at me that I didn't drink enough water today. That I shouldn't eat a brownie when I'm trying to watch my weight. All I could hear myself say was fail fail fail. I've been setting myself up to feel really bad.

I'm sure most of this is stemming out of frustration. I'm upset with my current situation and feel confined. I'm lashing out because I am angry that I have no sense of control over my health. That no one can fix me and stop these bad things from happening to me. I've felt angry that I can work to do everything right with my current auto-immune diseases, do everything the doctors tell me to do, and then have something like this (an out-of-the-blue spinal cord injury) happen. This injury took one thing away from me that I'm not sure I can get back- a sense of security.

After everything that happened in 2010, it took me a long time to feel safe again; that I wasn't going to lose my life. In fact, I'd say it took a full 2 years for me to begin to feel secure, to feel like the events of 2010 were behind me and the auto-immune disease diagnoses were done and I could focus on managing the diseases instead of living in fear of getting diagnosed with another. I began to look at 2010 as a part of the past and felt positive about the future.

And then July 2012 happened. And it washed away my sense of health, stability and security. I felt vulnerable all over again; no sense of control over my life, not being able to stop nor prevent health issues with life-altering consequences. The spinal cord injury was not preventable, which is worse than if it were preventable. Because if it were preventable, then going forward I could prevent it from happening again. Who could have seen something like this coming?

I don't like feeling vulnerable. I don't like to feel scared. I don't like to feel that I can't control what happens to me and that something else could happen to me again. I can't shake the fear that another health scare is going to sneak up on me and take something else away from me. Each illness chips away a little part of the enjoyable parts of my life.

There isn't a person alive that can make me feel secure right now; not a doctor, not a friend, not even a family member. Until you've experienced the fear stemming from multiple, back-to-back, life-altering health conditions, you just can't know how damn frightening it is. In an attempt to gain back some calm and peace in my mind, I've begun reading a new book, Calming Your Anxious Mind: how mindfulness & compassion can free you from anxiety, fear & panic. I'm hoping to take back some of the control that this latest event stole from me. I need to gain back control.

As I was sitting here tonight, I ran my fingers over the incision site on the front of my neck. The incision is still swollen like bee-stung lips. I pressed on it and it still is tender; it's like a soft spot on a newborn baby's head. I feel like if I pressed hard enough, my finger would go right through it. It made me feel slightly nauseous so I took my finger off it. Sometimes I need to run my fingers over it to prove it actually happened at all.

I'm struggling with fear and I'm hoping this too shall pass. And I'm afraid that airing to everyone what I'm struggling with makes me look weak and stupid. I hope you don't think that of me. Just know that I am working really hard to rebuild right now.