Finding a balance.

Things that made me cry last weekend:

Friday Night Lights, even though only God knows what number rewatch of the show I’m on.

The onion I had to chop for dinner. (Mom! I’m COOKING! Revolutionary. Truly.)

And, drumroll please… a fitted sheet.

In fact, I cried hardest over the fitted sheet.

Now, I do believe this is somewhat of a universal human experience. I firmly believe those things are created straight from the Devil and if you haven’t yet cried over trying to put one on your bed at least once in your life, I hate to break it to you, but I’m convinced you will in the near future.

It’ll get you. It might just be lurking in the shadows right now. But the fitted sheet breakdown will strike eventually. Trust me.

 Kidding, kidding… kind of.

No, for real. I’m joking.

 Well, about your need to fear a bedsheet. Not about one sending me over the edge.

 I’m getting somewhere, I promise.

 The actual subject of this post (not the evil fitted sheet), is my least favorite subject to talk about, write about, and admit the truth about to people. I genuinely absolutely hate it. Every time I’ve written about this before, my stomach has been in absolute knots before I hit publish.

 Even though I hate it, I learned a long time ago that if I want to achieve my goal of being an honest writer, who can actually use her words to help others, I have to talk about some of the things that I hate talking about.

 And this is one of them.

 If you’re new here, I have cerebral palsy. That’s not a subject I try to hide from or avoid. I’ll answer pretty much any question about it, and maybe tell you more than you want to know. (Like how my random muscle spasms that happen occasionally made chopping the onion also the most terrifying event of my weekend.) (Kidding again.)

(Kinda… not really.)

 What I have had to work really hard to be honest about, is a piece of my CP. Everyone’s experience with CP is different and not everyone deals with this specifically, but for me, a large part of my life with it has been chronic pain.

 Every day, something hurts. How bad can range greatly from day to day. Sometimes I can find a correlation to something I’ve done and the level of pain I’m in, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes, it’s just completely random.

 But a pretty obvious correlation that existed for the previous two years was the fact that I lived at home with my parents. I had help I didn’t even have to ask for. Given that the everyday mundane tasks are mostly the things that can flare my pain up fast, my body went through less on a daily basis at home. I was in less pain consistently.

 Now though, I’m on my own again.

 And a fitted sheet was what did me in.

 I spent my most of weekend catching up. Cleaning my entire apartment, doing laundry, making a Publix run, cooking (!!!). Since I’ve officially been living in Nash, I’ve slowly felt it start to set in how living on my own again was going to require my body to adjust. A small change in my pain levels here or there, I noted it, but I mostly ignored it.

 Or at least tried to. As I said earlier, I hate admitting the truth about this one thing to people. Meaning, unless I’m in extreme pain, I will do my best to make sure barely anyone knows I’m hurting. I do my best to ignore it. Though, years of this has taught me this isn’t helpful, now I try to tell a friend or two or my mom when it’s bad. For no other reason, than to feel like I’m not hiding from it. To feel like I’m looking my pain in its face and not letting it win.

But this weekend, as I was, you guessed it, wrestling my fitted sheet onto my bed, my pain won. I cried and called my mom, almost panicking.

 Which sounds insane. But as I was fully feeling the impact living on my own was having on my body again, making a simple task feel impossible, I became completely overwhelmed.

 Before I continue and tell you my point in this blog post, let me tell you what my point isn’t. I don’t want sympathy for the pain or CP. This has been my entire life, and I don’t see it as some sad story. It’s just the cards I have, and I give my all to living the best I can with them. Just like you have aspects of life that you deal with, this is mine.

 With that being said, as I sat on the floor crying, it was about more than a fitted sheet. I became overwhelmed with the thought of this being the rest of my life.

 What if this is it? I may never find myself in a situation like I had living at home again. What if I have to go through this alone, like I am now, for the rest of my life?

 I have full confidence I’ll be okay, no matter what. But still. What if the pain begins to stick around longer again?

 Which, in turn, left me feeling conflicted.

I have been blessed with resources and people who have pushed me and fought for me. But I have also worked my butt off and fought for this myself. I know that the people in my life are a huge reason I’m sitting here, but I also know that I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for the decisions I’ve made, the work I’ve put in.

 I’ve fought for this independence. This is what I wanted, and I got it. So, a piece of me felt guilty for my tears. The extremely grateful side of me, for the people who have been in my corner and for my own decisions, my own work, wanted my tears to stop.

 But the piece of me that acknowledges life is hard for everyone and this is my hard part, told me to let it out. Pent-up feelings and tears help nobody.

 But. Then I felt guilty again. It is never lost on me that CP impacts others differently and in some cases, more than it impacts me. While I know that I have fought and worked for this, there’s nothing any of us did to choose what our personal CP looks like. That side of me told me that no matter how much it hurts, no matter how long a stupid sheet takes me, I need to not whine about it. Some others have more pain than I have.

 I don’t know what my life will look like. But no matter what it does look like, a piece of myself told me to suck up the tears.

 I am happy. I am living my dream. I’ve got more people than I deserve in my corner. I did nothing to choose that or frankly deserve that.

 I woke up today.

 Some pain shouldn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things, right?

 I’ve been reflecting on this for the past few days, and the best I can come up with is being human is quite a tricky thing to be. Not just for me, but for everyone.

 Finding a balance of thankfulness and acknowledgement of hardships and fear of what they mean can be difficult to find.

 This is one of my blog posts where I definitely don’t have the answers.

 More just an acknowledgement of, man, if you’re feeling the complexity of what it means to be here, to be a human, to be in this world and this life, I’m with you.

 I’ve learned throughout the years that gratefulness and joy can coexist with tension and tough stuff. Perspective matters more, in my opinion, than how much you or I understand.

 Because as I say in a lot of these, I understand very little!

 But I do understand this, and I want this to be heard:

 In the context of CP, to my CP pals, it’s okay to say this sucks sometimes. But it’s also okay to be proud of yourself and appreciate how far you’ve come. And it’s okay to lean on others and to be thankful for the people and aspects that have been placed in your life, that help you. And it’s okay to admit when you’re hurting. No one who matters in your life will think less of you when you do.

Hoping I can get better at finding and being in the balance of thankfulness and awareness. Joy and tension. Honesty and perspective.

 …and that maybe a fitted sheet won’t make me cry again for a long, long time.

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