My CRPS journey to happiness

Hello! Yes, it’s me, please don’t fall over in shock! I know I’ve been awol for a while whilst getting to grips with the final dissertation for my studies. Today is allocated to studying, well, in my functional moments anyway! However, I’m in a lot of pain from how I’ve been sitting so I’ve moved to the sofa (complete with duvet and hot water bottle, of course) and rather than faff about online doing unproductive things whilst I wait for the pain levels to calm down a bit, I decided to pop in here and wish you all…. (wait foooor iiiiiit…)….. a very happy first ever “International Happiness Day”!

Guffaw!

Seeing as my brain is full of study and it’s a more painy day than usual I don’t relish the thought of going out for a physio walk today and getting told to be happy, when I’m concentrating on moving through the pain! But I do like the idea of formulating some replies that would subtly inform whilst making me laugh hilariously at their surprise at my daring to be so jokey about such a serious subject as my health! (Twisted sense of humour, much?) 😉

I remember a horrific physio walk, back in my early physio days. The physio experience got soooo much better because I persevered with it, but this was back when I was desperately trying to slowly make it around the (very small) block without bursting into tears. Then the ruddy postman cheerfully suggested to me that I should “cheer up love, it may never happen!” as he passed me by. Okay, so the thought of punching him in the face did occur to me in my imagination, but in reality I just feigned a smile and promptly burst into tears the moment he’d turned away.

We all know those days. But I’ve found that happiness creeps into my life in new ways. Admittedly I look for it because I want to be happy. I’ve spent time thinking about what truly makes me happy, and it really is the simple things that make me both happy and kinda peaceful on the inside, too.

I smile when the sun shines. I really enjoy a nice cup of tea (oh okay, many many cups of tea!). I adore my friends near and far, (some of my closest friends are beautiful souls I met through online CRPS groups, and even lovelier is that they are beginning to meet those of my closest friends who know me from the 3D world and they are becoming friends with each other, too. *glee*).

I loved hearing the first Spring birdsong a while ago (Spriiiing is on the way… waaarmth is on the way! Okay, so we’ve had more snow since then but I didn’t foresee that at the time so I still smiled at the Spring songstrel)!

I set myself little goals because that way I am not endlessly fighting to get to a far-off distant goal. Instead I achieve little goals along the way to the big goal, each of  which gives me a sense of achievement and makes me smile. It brings a feeling of capability and self-worth with it, too. Often my big goals are questionable as to whether I can actually achieve them, but my view is that I don’t know if I don’t try, and if I achieve lots of little goals along the way then every bit is an achievement to be proud of, however far I do or don’t get in the broader picture.

For example… I’d love to do a PhD, so I’m battling my health to get my masters degree. I don’t really expect to get a PhD, but I expect to keep looking into the possibilities and seeing if there’s a format that could work for me. Never say never, right?!

Another example… I’d love to represent my country doing Tai Chi at the Paralympics, but Tai Chi isn’t a part of the Paralympics and won’t be any time in the foreseeable future. (Yep, I even emailed the International Paralympic Committee to ask! Well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, right?! tee hee). I’m not saying I’m that good, but I do tend to aim high these days just to see what is possible. I’m still working on improving my Tai Chi as much as I can for as long as I can. I see it as something which can help me through my life into my grey-haired years (which, between you and me, I appear to be embarking upon already but they’re not too noticeable, yet, shhhhh 😉 ). One of the keys with CRPS is the balance between activity and rest, for me Tai Chi is a perfect activity challenge. (Here’s another secret… I’m even entering a big Tai Chi tournament! I figured, “why not?” It’s ‘only’ a beginners classification. I’d love to whoop some able-bodied asses with my slow-mo’ disabled styleeee, hehehe)!

I also wanted to do something to help my fellow CRPS patients, hence this blog came into existence. But with my professional(ish – my health stopped me from working after the psych’ degree) background training I wanted to do some research that would help in a more professional capacity. It’s all very well being an ‘expert patient’, but I figured a paper from a ‘researcher’ has more weight with the multi-disciplinary professionals involved, (not much more weight, but a bit, hey?). So I’ve spent my final masters module doing just that. Goodness knows if I’ll get these pain levels down enough to hit the dissertation deadline and pass, but after that I’ll have no deadline, and I will have the time to spend on writing a paper to share.

All this stuff, broken down into little chunks, little achievements, little moments of joy, (yes I’m still adding to my Jar of Joy!), moments of happiness both the big (a bronze medal at a little local interclub tournament last November. I know I didn’t write a post about it, I should have but I was feeling shy about it at the time. I think the reality has sunk in a bit more, now!) and the small (the sun shining in through the window whilst I sip a lovely cup of tea). I have soooo much happiness these days, I know it sounds weird but I can’t really explain it other than to say that my wants and appreciations in life have changed. Not that they’ve been downgraded, although it used to feel that way during the earlier stages of transformation, it’s actually more that I’ve recaptured my childlike appreciation of the things that we so easily grow to miss as busy responsible adults. Perhaps that’s why I like hanging out with the nieces so much! They’re about the same age as I am in my heart these days 😉

Fun. Silliness. Joy. Happiness. These are the ways I live these days. Despite (and quite possibly because) of the massive relationship losses that so many of us experience. Achieving small goals is valuable for the associated personal progression (I love learning 😀 ). I know I have pain and additional neurological, autonomic- and central nervous system issues with resulting physical and neurological difficulties, but I prefer to see them as a challenge! I relish a challenge these days! I never thought of myself as competitive, I want everyone to do well and I like to encourage others to progress, to become, to *be*, if that is what they want to do. But it turns out that there is a type of competitiveness I hadn’t taken into account before, and that is my competitiveness with myself! That is, that I always want to push harder, to be the best that I can be at something, but still within realistic boundaries applied by my health. After all, pushing too hard only results in going backwards healthwise and having to cover the same ground again to get back to the standard I was at before. That’s fine, I’m in no hurry. I am not competing with anyone else. I am on my own path and I’ll take it at a pace that is most productive for me. I’m fine with that, it’s worked for me so far.

It’s always exciting looking at how far I’ve come and gleefully dream up new ludicrous ‘big’ goals to make me grin! Half the fun is inventing a new goal and fully expecting that I can only get so far but that I’ll be so proud of myself for what I manage,… and then surpassing my own expectations. That’s fantastic! I do not expect to achieve my goals, but I expect to work towards them and achieve stuff along the way! Gosh I’m a paradoxical chick, huh?! 😀

Above is a tree of my journey that I created a while ago. I began it with my health changes as the roots and trunk – the beginning of this particular tack of my journey. Then the experience got less concentrated, more diverse. It branched out into many things. All inter-related, many overlapping in timescale, so there’s no pattern to the branches, just a lot of words, feelings, experiences and more that led me to starting this blog. Then I found a whole new chapter of my journey lay before me. I look forward to living it, I’m intrigued to see what happens next in the story!

Lotsa love and happiness from me,

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