Getting Unstuck From The Wall of Overwhelming Shit

After the whole eye one in a million thing happened, I have to be completely honest with you. I handled and accepted it, and was grateful that it had nothing to do with diabetes.

And then...I hit a wall emotionally. Like I totally backed up the car that was my life, and rammed into a wall of… well I’m not sure what the wall was made of. Maybe it was a wall of shock, but it felt like a wall of shit. I believe it was more like a wall of shit created by being completely overwhelmed with life.

It started with not being able to sleep at night. Partly because whenever I closed my eyes in the dark, I’d see (and still do) a really trippy black w/a green glowing aura underneath my eyelids. It’s a really good thing green is my favorite color, because now I see it for about 10 minutes whenever I close my eyes to go to sleep.

My Docs can’t explain the green aura and told me that it’s most likely a side affect of my photo transmitters no longer working properly &being all screwed up. They really can’t tell me much. Like why my right eye is constantly tired at the end of the day and starts to tear, or why whenever I wake up in the morning, my right eye feels like the Sahara, or why I felt pressure from the blood clot, and when and if it would ever disappear.

And between you and me, I also wasn’t sleeping because I was so afraid of what I’d see (or wouldn’t) when I woke up. I’d lie in bed at night, covering my good eye with one hand and trying to see the other in the dark with my bad eye. When I finally fell asleep, it was restless, dreamless sleep.

In the morning I’d wake up afraid to open my eyes, and praying that my left eye was fine. I was tired and completely spent. Honestly, thank GOd I wasn't flying the space shuttle for NASA, because at the point & time, I was COMPLETELY lost in space.

Work remained unfinished, contracts remained unsigned, and I remained frozen in my tracks from the sheer weight of feeling overwhelmed.

I had something like 10 doctors appointments and 6 different procedures in a 3-week time frame. All showed that I was perfectly normal - but I sure didn’t feel it.

It was totally weird because I accepted the eye part for what it was, and was so thankful for what it wasn't. And some stuff went back to normal pretty quickly.

I was cracking jokes and going with the flow, but then I’d cry at my two-week and 4 weeks follow up visits to my ophthalmologist. Partly because he’d say there was no change, but mostly because my Dr felt so bad he could barely look at me in my good eye. At my 6 week follow up last week, he was finally able to look at me, grab my arm and have a heart to heart without looking sad - and that made me SO GLAD.

Other people’s reactions became my emotional litmus, if they looked or felt sad about it, nine times out of ten, I’d make them laugh and be positive. It was the tenth time out of ten that would throw me for a sadness filled loop. At a Christmas party, my friend Bob came up to me and b\put his arm around me and stood there for a few minutes, just holding on to me tight and not saying a word.

We’d been friends for years and years. Bob’s a quiet guy who went to school with my sister. Normally, he always makes me laugh laugh out loud. But when he looked at me and said: I heard about your eye Kel, I’m so sorry. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and his eyes looked like his heart was about to break - and I felt so bad for him.

I could feel my face get red and my eyes start to tear up. I shrugged my shoulders and struggled to get the words out: What can you do? We have to move forward.“ I said with a huge lump in my throat. And even though I absolutely believed in those words 100%, I could hardly keep back my tears.

When one of my closest friends mother (who is I also consider a dear friend) saw me and tried her best to be positive and supportive, she started to cry, and so did I.

When my own mother said, and this is a direct quote: Kelly: I'd like to donate my eye to you- i don't need it, and I really want you to have it. It's the exact same color- it'll be a perfect match. The lump in my throat returned, but I was able to crack a joke.

Instead of crying I told her: Thanks mom, but I want you to keep it. Leave it to me in your will, because If you give it to me now, it's just going to cause all sorts of crap with the siblings! I can see it now- "And mom gave you her eye, your so spoiled!" Afterwards, I went to the bathroom, and had a good cry.

Tears happen no matter how much we accept something.

Then on December 24th, my insurance company sent me a letter telling me that I HAD to switch to a different policy- one that was twice as much per month as the one I pay for now. I freaked! Not only did I freak, I was mad. Mad that I’d had $15,000 worth of tests that had nothing to do with diabetes, and all this tests said I was 100% fine. I was a 1 in a million woman and now I had to pay through the nose becuase of it!

My heart and brain was deemed in fine working order- which is freaking fantastic and should have been a joyous moment in my life. My insurance company should have thrown me a ticker tape parade down Broadway! Instead, they were kicking me in the ass!

Top that off with actually trying to get a hold of an insurance rep on December 27^th, which is effing impossible because all the reps are courting their big clients working on open enrollment be for December 31st. Basically, you have a better chance of seeing God on a cloudy day.

All I wanted to do was hide under the covers and did the day-to-day bare minimum.

I was tired of tackling the hard stuff in life, I was tired of feeling broke and broken – I wanted to coast.

A few days ago I got another letter from the insurance company, and yet another bill, and I got sad again. I mentioned insurance companies and karma in a tweet and received some wonderful DM's from many awesome friends. Those DM's made me feel much better.

And then, something miraculous happened. I got my ass in gear. I started making calls, catching up on paper work, and plowing past the shit.

I got unstuck.

Life can throw us manure curve balls during a shit storm and cause us to bang smack dab into a wall of crap and get stuck there.

You can either stay stuck in the shit forever, OR you can get unstuck, back up from the wall of overwhelming,take those crap balls and the manure from the shit storm & have a hell of a garden. I mean an award winning garden, like the kind that stops people in their tracks because it’s so fan fucking fantastic and awe inspiring.

It's taken some time, but I've finally extracted and unstuck myself from the shit and the crappy way it’s made me feel, and I’m moving forward and moving on.

Is it hard? Yes. Do I feel have moments of feeling overwhelmed? YES. But it feels SO GOOD to not be stuck in the overwhelming moments all the time.

Why am I telling you this? I'm not really sure, except that your my friends, I love you, and I just thought I’d share.