I have sat down to write this post several times over the course of the last few weeks and, without fail, struggled to come up with the proper words to express in equal parts my excitement and fear over reaching this pivotal point in my life. Rather than trying to summarize it nicely, I am going to give you the Cliff Notes version right here in this introduction – I QUIT MY JOB TO PURSUE BLOGGING! Now that the elephant in the room has been addressed and I have shouted my excitement from the rooftop, I unfortunately need to put a damper on everyone’s enthusiasm, including my own, because this step did not come to fruition for quite the reason I hoped it would.
After the jump, I am delving deeper into the personal reasons I chose to make this leap of faith NOW. The reality of this situation is quite heavy and hard to share, but it is important to me that I do not sugarcoat this. While it would be wonderful if life could be neatly tied up with a picture-perfect bow, that simply is not reality and, more than anything, I want this platform to represent reality, both good and bad.
Last April I was diagnosed with a degenerative connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I had always suspected that something large scale was wrong with my body because it has never worked quite like it was supposed to. I was plagued with never ending, seemingly unrelated illnesses and injuries as a child. As I reached adulthood, the random laundry list of maladies I carried with me read more like a textbook on Victorian diseases than modern 20th and 21st century plights. Suffice it to say that finally receiving a diagnosis after 31 years of exhibiting symptoms was both a relief and sobering. I finally had my long-awaited answer and yet possessing that answer made me more alone than ever as far as the medical community was concerned.
You see, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome does not have a cure. Not only does it not have a cure, it is such a complex disease that most doctors will not touch with a ten-foot stick because it is next to impossible to manage. I initially took that in stride. I assumed that, as a healthy and active individual, this was something I could handle on my own and so, after taking a few initial months off from Musings on Momentum to absorb the news, I returned to my hectic schedule of working 40 hours a week, commuting 15 hours each week to get to and from that job, and blogging 30-40 hours a week on top of that. It was an insane schedule, made even more insane by the fact that I was told I needed to start spending hours upon hours a week in physical therapy sessions to regain what strength and mobility I could that the disease had already claimed. Great…except the physical therapy clinic my doctor insisted I go to was not open on evenings or weekends and it was not as if I could leave work multiple times a week for hours at a time to attend my sessions. So, instead of getting better, I began to get much, much worse.
The initial dislocated right hip that led to my diagnosis last April eventually turned into a minimum of one hip dislocation a day. These dislocations initially happened at my 9-5 job which, while awkward, was at least somewhat manageable. After a few months however, daily injuries combined with drastically increased stress levels at work began to lead to dislocations while driving. Now, I hope you don’t know this firsthand, but having your hip dislocate while you’re trying to hold down the brake pedal of your car in stop and go LA traffic is both excruciatingly painful and dangerous.
The daily injuries, pain, and serious concern over my ability to physically handle the commute began to take their toll until, this year, my legs began giving out on me, resulting in me falling…A LOT. The message was coming through loud and clear – YOU NEED TO QUIT – but I flat out refused to listen. I am stubborn, I am a fighter, and if you tell me that I can’t do something you’d better be damn well sure I will do EXACTLY THAT THING. By the end of March, my body was completely shutting down to the point I had lost a significant amount of weight that I did not have to lose, I was frequently left so weak that I was unable to walk for entire days, and I was feeling more hopeless than I have ever felt in my life. I genuinely believed, in my heart of hearts, that this disease was going to take me down. And so, I finally listened to my body and admitted defeat.
At least that is what it initially felt like…total and complete defeat. Leaving my job significantly earlier than planned on left us in a financial lurch which comes with its own complications and concerns but, overall, the last few weeks have been incredible. My pain levels are down considerably, my injuries have decreased, my husband and I have time to connect again in a non-caregiver/patient manner, I am putting on weight, and, most importantly, I have time every day to spend in serious physical therapy.
Since the end of March, I have regained a great deal of strength and mobility, making things like attending Coachella this weekend an actual possibility again, something that it was very much not as few as four weeks ago! Most excitingly, going through this saga together has allowed my husband and I to take a critical look at our life with one another. We have made some BIG choices and BIG changes that I am so incredibly excited to share over the next few months, including a huge move coming up in just six short weeks (GULP).
As the weeks go on, you will see a definite increase in terms of both the quantity AND quality of content on Musings on Momentum. One of the hardest things for me over the last year was to realize that I did not have the bandwidth available to give Musings all that I wanted. To see a platform I gave daily love and attention to for nearly three years suffer was heartbreaking for me. That is about to change.
For the near future, I will be blogging full-time, at least until after the aforementioned move I alluded to above. Once we are settled in our new home, I may try to find a good part-time fit away from the house so I am out interacting with human beings other than my husband on a daily basis and have a dependable stream of income every month. Or I may not. I genuinely have no idea what is to come over course of the next few months and, for my Type A personality, that is a really uncomfortable reality to sit with. But, as I mentioned in my introduction, I do not want to sugarcoat this situation, what led to it, or the uncertainty that accompanies it. This is life – it is painful, it is messy, it is unfair, and it is confusing as hell, but we are all in it together. I hope you will join me on the next phase of my journey.
