Lifting Out

Well, I'm back, baby! My fatigue started to lift this morning. I don't know when the next episode is going to come, but I'm hoping to have a little break. I like when positive thoughts mill around in my brain. When I am looking at the world through a rosier lens, which is most often as I am pretty much an optimist by nature. I feel like PAWS not only makes me feel icky on a physical level, but the negative thoughts are so toxic. Also, our country had a very sad anniversary yesterday and I was confronted with all of that drudging up. There was a special on the History Channel with footage that people in New York had shot during that horrific tragedy. It brought back all the same feelings of panic and helplessness we all felt across the country. This led to me reflecting on the afternoon of the Boston Marathon bombings, as I was "fortunate" enough to have been 500 ft. from the second blast. Ironically, I was there with friends who I met when I was living in Philadelphia, the very place I was on 9/11. It was a strange, full-circle kind of thing for me. I am still not quite over it. Added to the fold of bad thoughts - I live 10 miles from the site of the Station Nightclub fire. I grew up 20 minutes from the Rhode Island border in Massachusetts and the people who perished in that fire were all my age (I bought that first Great White tape when I was a single in high school). So, all of this was swirling and swirling and swirling in my brain the last couple of weeks. Now that the PAWS fog has lifted, I feel "right" again. I guess my point is, (a) PAWS is real and (b) the timing of that bout was pretty bad. I am reminded that self care is critical. For me, it means making the time to go grocery shopping for healthy food every week. I am pretty good about this, but I missed shopping this week and it threw my nutrition off (if I don't pre-plan my meals and PAWS creeps along, I am left making some not-so-good choices). I have to exercise. During an episode of PAWS, it's quite literally the last thing in the world I want to do. But even if I don't do my usual routine, I think that at least doing some of it is better than doing none of it. I have to listen to my body. If I need to go to bed at 8:30 PM, then I just do. And I need to practice gratitude.

Moving on!

I am so glad I can come here and write about this. No one in my life gets addiction besides people in my recovery group, so talking to people about PAWS would just be weird.