"Don’t Feel Like Sh*t!"

I Cannot Tell You How Many Times I Say, “I Wish I Hadn’t Eaten”

This is the next part in a week long schpeal.

Here is Part One.

Let me know how you’re feeling and doing?

xo

This week I started to feel really proud of myself for the first time in a long time…

Even if yesterday I explained that feeling in the most cynical way possible.

(Once a Plath, always a Plath.)

My body used to dance everyday, for much of the day, without a ton of breaks or time to eat.

This sounds dramatic (it is), but if you’re someone who doesn’t have a colon, or who has any other severe gastrointestinal illness… then you know that timing your meals when you have a room of children waiting for you, for example, IS an extremely delicate science.

My best friend and I were just talking about how having GI illness can mean you “always miss the movie” and that’s the perfect term for how it can impact a life.

At night, if I get home from dance late, then eat dinner, then want to wind down with a spot of cinema or anything… I end up returning only by the time credits are ascending.

I cannot tell you how many times a week I say, “I wish I hadn’t eaten” because I hate falling asleep hours after my loved ones (who can eat, drink, go to bed in normal succession) and I want to sleep too.

There is no perfect way to make it work when you’re missing organs and never know when you’ll be bleeding all night (avec la latrine), or throwing up, or going into a pancreas flare.

We could time every single part of our week perfectly - and I meticulously do, down to the minute sometimes - and there is always a curveball.

Always.

I wish more loved ones could truly sit down with their ill loves and ask more questions about this sick/life balance, because the unintentional frustrations and unintentionally passively passive-aggressive comments that slip out can feel like a lashing for the person who wants to do exactly as they say too. (We want to reply on time, not cancel things, be able to plan ahead)…

And this is often the worst part about having a body that swims with salmon.

I KNOW for a fact that the people who love me and think they know all there is to know… still don’t know some of the things that are dealt with during each week, that make “replying on time” (as example) not what they think it is.

But we can’t put our shoes on someone else … so writing here is the closest I have for now.

This week WAS a week of blood loss, by the way.

Blood loss from eating, at night, for a handful of days.

A couple of curled-in-a-ball terrible stomach attacks that wrecked my efficiency (still unsure if was a little bit of pancreas/liver pain or the ovary nonsense).

And my incisions throbbing enough to keep me awake at times, from commuting a ton (I’ve decided that car chairs are not built for spines?) and sliding up and down on the floor to demonstrate choreography (that part was fun).

Tomorrow, I have just successes to list, because I think keeping small triumphs in our respective scrapbooks matters… but I wanted to be honest along the way.

And thus, this became a multi-part-er?

I didn’t want to just list the wins and then someone in a similar situation sees those and feels like sh*t….

Don’t feel like sh*t!

For every productive day that someone shows online, so many of us simply… can’t.

Tomorrow SHOULD be (?) a column day over on CF News Today!

The goal is every Wednesday, and I write every Wednesday, but all writer’s know that working for a publishing house means many columnists and editors trying to make magic happen together… so just like with dance, or any other subjective and artistic field: Nothing is a given.

We are always working together and creatively reinventing the wheel.

Anyways, for now:

Can’t wait to see you Thursday and Friday for Part Three and Four!

As I always annoyingly say on a Tuesday:

If you have a prompt or a question or a truth you’d like me to tackle to add some texture here, pretty please drop below?

I read EVERY comment or word anyone is ever kind enough to share (both at @catchingbreaths, and DM, and email, etc)- but know that I am terrible at replying to Sub-friends a lot of the time and for that I’ll genuinely always be sorry…

Always.

Even if I am falling behind at writing how much I Love You…

Please know that I never fall behind with reading your loving words, loving your lovely selves, reading your work back if you’re a writer and…

Well, just being really damn grateful right now.

But… a reply in a piece here is like a very long text response, perhaps?

Thank you for staying here…

xo