A new beginning

Since my collaboration with Divij has now ended, unfortunately my photographs will now be accompanied with rants sans beautiful prose and poetry. But if you appreciate dry humour during very angry ramblings, read on.

September 2021

After two years of believing that I’ll just have to take these meds for the rest of my life, I consulted another rheumatologist recently. He claimed that he has seen people eventually wean off of these medicines but it’ll take time. He has doubled my doze cause my pain isn’t reducing but he believes that with regular strength training I could go off of them which has been my first hopeful consultation with a doctor so maybe it could get better ? But currently, this flare up has me writing this a in tears. A lot of what I do is through tears. For instance, seeing my fit-band have less than 200 steps in a day makes me get out of bed and cry during a workout or yoga, before or after I have to teach is an important time, or even having to play with my cat. But I do it, sometimes slowly but following through, cause I can’t just stop forever. The previous self portraits, the one with the blindfold was during my last flare up. I was battered and exhausted and cried while capturing those photographs cause I wasn’t being creative enough, active enough, in my 20s enough. They were a product of this horrible pain but I couldn’t write about it, I couldn’t word it. But im taking a step. Dont know if its in the right direction, but its a step nonetheless. Im hoping this current pain ends soon, cause my eyelids feel so heavy all the time. I want someone to wring out the pain from my body like you would water from cloth. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like my body feels heavy like a rock and jelly like at the same time and the only solace I find is in my room alone while scrolling mindlessly through instagram until my eyes start to burn and I finally start falling asleep. After which sleeping is still an hour long process, at the very least. Twisting, turning, stretching every muscle, cracking every joint until I don’t have energy to rid myself of the pain that never goes away and just fall asleep. Yes, I've tried reading a book and also just keeping my phone away, I took mild sleeping pills too, but it doesn’t really help the pain to stop, nor is it a good habit to start. A week ago I tried taking Modafinil in the mornings again (for about a week and a half). These helped me stay awake last year when I was chronically fatigued and falling asleep any chance I got. But guess what, they dont affect me anymore. So I developed a short lived coffee addiction, which as an fibro warrior can guess, my IBS just scoffed at and had very subsequently stop. Now, I try to sneak in naps when my moms not around, when I have a break between students.