Detour to Bliss

Listening to the echo of my last blog, I decided it'd be good for me to face a bit more uncertainty, so I moved... not across the street, across the town, or across the Bay Bridge, as I had so many times previously; no, I undertook the most daring adventure I could ponder, at least within the continental US: I moved to Texas.

TEXAS?! The proverbial gasp precedes you.

Yes, Texas.

Why TEXAS?!

Dare you give me one reason I should not have moved here? Okay, other than the conflicting, overly enthusiastic political persuasion, the unbreakable bond between church and state, the diluted affinity for country music, the heat, the lack of mountains, the silly accents, the 10-gallon egos, the oil industry, George W. Bush, the fire ants...

Yes, Texas. What seems perverted to the cohort I left behind in California is that I wanted to move to Texas (and let's be clear, I'm talking about the least Texan city in Texas, I moved to Austin) so I could be happy. It was not impromptu or a decision I came to lightly. I am not the kind of person that can just throw my life in a backpack and call "home" where ever my feet press against the dust. I am not so breezily "giving this a try." I wrestled the idea for many, many months, and in that time I held a mirror up to my life so I could reflect on what I'd be potentially divorcing. Despite the ocean and the bay, the mountains, the wine country, the rich cultural diversity, and the friends I had grown to love like family, all I really saw staring back was struggle, dissatisfaction, and the weathered marks of a 6 year lament. My experiences in California were valuable, and I grew up quite a lot, but like a cactus, I grew older without growing roots any deeper than surface layer. I had the basic needs met, but nothing gave me strength or a meaningful reason to stay.

It whittled down to 2 options, but both of them included a larger network of friends and family that would sustain me and nourish my displaced roots: I could go back to Michigan, or I could risk it and move to the Lone Star State.

"Life starts when you accept the maybe and make friends with the unknown."  I said that. It's about time I practice what I preach.

Once the last box was packed and loaded and directions to Austin were printed out, my purpose shifted from survival mode to getting-happy mode. I've experienced quite enough depression and self-loathing for this life-time and the next, however long they last me, and as we all well know, there's no time like today - nay - this very moment to be one's truest most authentic self. Even though I've been more or less passively journeying down the yellow brick road my entire life trying to discover happiness, I recognized I had an opportunity to use this transitional period to really gaze inwardly and find what would give me more control of my happiness.

You see, from day 1 in California... shit, frankly, even on the road trip out there... I started looking for "signs," tallying up reasons my existence there was "meant to be." Unfortunately, maybe because of my shit-tinted glasses of depression, I always had a larger tally in the "not meant to be" pool (ie: slept on a plywood bed in a "furnished" rented room, resulting in suing my landlord, also resulting in losing the only friend I knew in San Francisco; my bike was stolen; my jobs lost funding; my roommates were slobs... it goes on and on). I stayed longer and longer trying to give myself more time to make it meant to be, and the fleeting positive events became so important, so I could validate my entire life, that they became all the heavier and easier to drop, break, and crush my soul. A wiser person would have known this was a silly way to live.

In fact, a wiser person said exactly that. Joseph Campbell, philosopher and author-extraordinaire, wrote,  

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

By studying the greatest myths, legends, and religious stories known to man, Joseph Campbell made it clear that happiness is not something outside yourself you must lust after to attain, rather it comes from within you, provided you have the eyes to see it and you steadfastly, boldly, unapologetically follow it. What makes someone else happy is certainly not guaranteed to make you happy; your bliss is authentic to you and you alone.

There's the detour sign! The road I was on is under construction. This is a new way to happiness. It's an internal speedway. Proceed without caution.

My mission in my recent past as a Californian was to get away from Michigan and find what would make me happy, but clearly I was looking in the wrong direction. Ultimately my move to Texas, however rash it seems, or unsexy it seems, or however uprooting it may actually be, is conveniently giving me the chance to change my view and get on the right philosophical track. I'm not saying I'm starting over, because life (if you haven't noticed) is continuous, and even though I don't consider the last 6 years the "best" years of my life, all those crazy San Francisco days and nights brought me to better understand myself, and I'll draw invaluable lessons from those times while I'm in Texas and where ever else I lay my roots.

Now I have the chance to redefine my self by really listening to what makes my heart sing, and I can make decisions that will propel me further into joy. I can work for an organization I trust in; I can live in a place that feels comfortable - that's not a 300 sq foot studio - that I can afford; I can surround myself with positive people who share my interests and values and who will care about me just as much as I care about them. Of course I had this option all along - I could have stayed in CA with this new found affirmative attitude, but it would have been lonely none-the-less. In a new place, it's simply easier to let the mucky, shitty stuff roll off as I cling only to the things that I feel a positive connection to in my heart of hearts. At least I can try to.

The warning sign in this is that it's easy to fall back into old habits and ways of thinking... it's easy to tally up the "good signs" and the "bad signs." In my first week here in Austin, I thought this place was most certainly not meant to be for me - my dad had a heart attack, my apartment was under construction, I got a ridiculous and unjust ticket... but then good things started happening (I got a job!) and I felt a kick of that karmic fuel I'm used to running on. But again, all that was outside myself.

As much as I do believe in karma (so much I named my cat after it), I have to trust that my happiness in this lifetime is not subject to the tally marks of external forces. Bad things don't happen because I have created bad karma for myself. Bad things don't happen because I chose the wrong path and I have to stick to it, either. Life is flexible, and if the path I'm on seems unnecessarily bumpy or lacking in scenery, I can choose the detour, the service road, or I can go in a different direction all together - but that's up to me, not just the external signs I see along the way.

I just finished a book called "Rebel Buddha" by Dzogchen Ponlop, and in this book Ponlop describes the danger of sticking to the same path, just because we think the Buddha said so (and you can apply this to any religion, philosophy, or individual world view). We might think the path to spiritual liberation is a straight line, padded with daily meditations or going to church or whatever practices you've been taught, but that may not always be the best thing for you. He writes, "When a living tradition becomes static, without any sense of freshness, and we lose our basic heart connection with the spiritual journey, it's actually very sad." He continues, paraphrasing the Buddha, "Not looking at what's going on inside can be much more destructive than worrying about unfavorable external conditions."

So from now on my heart's calling the shots, and it's going to drive me to a full lifetime of happiness. It doesn't matter what road I took before, and it's ok if I have to reroute down the line, that's just a part of the journey. But right now, in this very precious moment, bliss is inside me, screaming:

• Trust your instincts
• Think less, feel more
• Say yes to new things
• "Enjoy the struggle"
• Accept your feelings as truth, don't fight them, but let them go like leaves floating down a river
• Embrace your youthfulness... Be curious! Be silly! Speak your mind! Climb a tree! - worry about how you'll get down later
• Welcome silence
• Open your heart... stop holding grudges and spending time with anger, that's all in the past
• Take pleasure in little things; appreciate them like they're big things
• Care for a living thing outside of yourself, whether it be a plant, a shelter cat, or an entire community, or as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch... this is to have succeeded"
• Love
• Love
• Love......

Happiness is an internal journey you take with your Self, not an external destination you can walk or drive to. I'm not trying to give the impression that I've suddenly "found" something, please excuse my preachiness, but I do feel like I'm on the right track now. I suspect I'll be hit by waves of more yucky stuff that will force me to question my personal philosophy and reassess what makes me happy. In fact, this will definitely happen! And I look forward to it, too. Without those bends and unexpected twists, those doubts, those opportunities to reflect and try a different approach, I will never know how brilliant and beautiful my happiness is meant to be.

The gift of fear, uncertainty, and other yucky stuff

I've found over the last few days that TEDTalks on instant Netflix is the newest "thing." The TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference has been a forum for researchers, geniuses, and masters of hope to come together and present their "ideas worth spreading." I've been a fan of these talks for some time, so when Netflix coyly suggested a documentary-series on "Sex, Secrets, and Love," the ex-sex-ed expert in me eagerly began streaming. I figured it'd be an excellent refresher course on some of my all time favorite topics.

To my unexpected delight, this is the latest episode I watched... it's about 20 minutes, but very much worth your time: Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability






For those of you who really just skipped over the cool part and onto my word vomit, let me summarize the discussion with what Brown said in a Huffington Post article:

If there's anything I've learned over the past decade and experienced firsthand over the last year, it's this: Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose.

Even if letting ourselves be seen and opening ourselves up to judgment or disappointment feels terrifying, the alternatives are worse: Choosing to feel nothing -- numbing. Choosing to perfect, perform, and please our way out of vulnerability. Choosing rage, cruelty, or criticism. Choosing shame and blame. Like most of you reading this, I have some experience with all of these alternatives, and they all lead to same thing: disengagement and disconnection.

I don't think you have to be a TEDtalk presenter to recognize the truth in everything Brown is saying, and it certainly doesn't take a genius to hypothesize how I feel about this topic. I started watching the episode in my power-hour of 11 o'clock PM, and it has sparked fireworks in my brain that echo so profoundly that there is nothing I can do but extend the sound through my fingertips on my keyboard.

Courage, Brown pointed out, is the ability to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. I think this is my new motto and personal mission. I know that I am only a fraction of the courage I can be. Now, because of something as simple as a 20 minute monologue from someone who I had never heard of before, I am energized to become even more me.

By living "out loud" - honestly, authentically, and boldly - and by taking risks without knowing what the payoff will be, or if there will be a positive return on my investments at all, I feel like I am starting to take more of my own shape in life. It feels like the rough edges around my persona can smooth out... I can lay down some of my rigid shields and defenses because there's no longer a point in protecting myself from my own fears. What will strengthen me and help me transcend is the very thing I've kept hidden most my life - that vulnerability.

A past therapist of mine called this "tolerating ambiguity." We (and I don't know if that's an American We or a gender specific We or an all of humanity We) seem to be programed for needing clear answers. It's either / or, yes or no, black or white. This is especially evident when we're assessing our own values and ideals.

• Am I a valuable member of my company? My community?
• Am I a good person?
• Am I making the world a better place?
• Am I lovable?
• Will I be happy?

I need to know what the future holds! But asking myself these questions introduces more unknowns and more "opportunities" to feel vulnerable. Sure we can throw down some math and conclude with some probabilities. But if I remember anything from high school calculus, there can be multiple answers to the same problem, and it's that vagueness that poses a threat to my cool and confident character.

Will I be happy if I stay put in the known, in the comfort zone, in my current apartment, job, zip code? Yes - No - Maybe so... Shit, where'd I put my magic 8-ball on this one? It'd feel a lot better to have an answer on all of these big life questions.

More importantly, I must ask myself: Will I be my Truest Self if I don't accept and appreciate the moments of not-knowing and absurd uncertainty? This is the only moment we've got, right? Gotta make it count! And it's true that sometimes the moment we're in outright stinks. Like Brene Brown discussed, we are born into suffering. Painful things happen. Our friends and family are plagued with illness and death, we endure economic hardships and job losses, we face heart break, and we DON'T KNOW what's going to happen to us...  I don't think it's all about finding the positives and rising above this yucky stuff; what will make us stronger is actually grabbing a handful of the crap and uncertainty and fear, taking a deep breath, looking the mess straight in the eye and saying, "Why hello, yucky stuff! I see you! You are scary! You make me uncomfortable! THANK YOU!"

The more I can face my inner-demons this way, and the more I can even show those demons to the outer-world, the more true and whole-hearted I think I will become.  The more whole-hearted I become, the more I'll be able to inspire positive action in the people and things around me (and what more could make me happy?). A few months ago I shared some ugly truths about my depression, and you know what happened? I felt better. And my friends huddled around me and supported me. And it taught people something, and maybe helped others suffering with their vulnerabilities. Evidently, yucky stuff yields wholeness and love.

Think of me (think of yourself!) as a trunk of a tree: Being courageous is like letting my roots and branches stretch out beyond my reach. I may not be able to do anything about them at a certain point, and I may be more exposed and vulnerable to the elements, but stretching out wide, with an open heart, will also provide me a stronger foundation. I can grow taller and provide more fruit to the world when I embrace the unknown - when I embrace my "opportunities for growth." Maybe with enough reach, I can become a shelter for someone/thing else, and I will feel truly useful in this crazy, chaotic place on Earth. It starts with accepting the maybe and making friends with the unknown.

Vulnerability, although yucky, is a gift. And I intend to use it.

The Audacity of Non-Compromise

Lately I've been reconsidering the value of compromise.

Two weeks ago I was in Denver for a week of staff training, team-building, and planning.  One of the activities we did as a team was determine our individual management styles and how we deal with conflicting points of view. The five styles, in order of their preference amongst my coworkers, are: 1. Collaborate, 2. Compromise, 3. Yield, 4. Avoid, and 5. Compete. 

Collaboration is great, right? Especially in a work place, it's valuable to prevent future conflict by working together from the very start and knowing one another's thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and merging ideas together to create a cohesive product. In personal relationships, it's: I'm good at making entrees, you're good at making dessert, together we can do the dishes later... bada bing bada boom, what a happy couple.

On the other hand, Yielding, Avoiding, and Competing are three strategies all deemed inappropriate most of the time. If you yield, you're just letting the other person dictate; if you avoid, you're just letting conflict run amok indefinitely; if you compete, you're the dictating bitch or bastard. But frankly, these three strategies have their time and place, whether it's at work or at home. Ultimately I'm going to yield to my boyfriend and let him make chocolate cake, because it is his favorite, even though I may be in the mood for yellow cake. When tensions are running high, I'm going to avoid the fight and go for a walk and let the situation deescalate.  When I know I'm right about matters of importance, particularly matters pertaining to my own feelings, I'm going to "compete" opposing views (though I prefer to think it means having confidence in myself) until my point is understood.

With all that considered, compromise is generally held up as a much better management tool by the masses because if you can't start out collaborating, at least you can identify each other's needs and wants, and work backwards towards the goal. What I find interesting about this style of management is that both or all parties have to lose a little in order for the group to win. In a relationship, I suppose an example would be: I'll do all the cooking if you do all the cleaning. Neither is an exceptionally fun task to fulfill all by one's own self, but you will get to your end goal, even if you're left feeling resentful and you really didn't want to do the cooking. I wonder... is compromise still compromise if you have to sacrifice?

In my last relationship, I thought being a really good girlfriend meant compromising my own ideals for the sake of my partner's, and for the sake of having a relationship at all. On our very first date, Mr. T (name changed for privacy and humor) explained to me that he was just recently separated from his wife; he moved out only two months prior to meeting me, and they were not planning on filing the divorce for maybe two years, or until one of them found themselves in a new and serious relationship. Mr T told me about how sad he was in his marriage, how he and his wife had not had sex for the entire 7-ish years they were married (he couldn't exactly remember how long they had been married), and how the overwhelming desire for physical and emotional intimacy led him to fall in love with (and in between the legs of) a friend he and his wife shared.

My first reaction to Mr T's story was of disgust and criticism.  I thought, "I don't want to date a married man, not even a divorced man. I don't want to date a cheater. This guy's a Catholic? He's 36? He should know better!" But the secondary reaction of sympathy and compassion was mighty persuasive. Through his openness and clear vulnerability, it occurred to me that Mr T was wounded and needed affection. Furthermore, he was giving me all the romantic cues that I was special - I was worth overcoming his heart break for - I was not like all the other women of his turbulent past. In face of my chronic loneliness, and in absence of any other man showing me any attention what-so-ever, I chose compassion over criticism. I chose to dive into his problems, making them more important to fix than my own. I was making a compromise with myself in order to feel loved.

And a lot of good that did me.

While my situation with Mr T may sound like an extreme and reckless example of compromise, I know that I am not the only woman out there making these mistakes in order to preserve the happiness of men or the hope for a long-lasting relationship.

I may be particularly vulnerable to making these mistakes in relationships, as all the surveys say my personality type is that of the Helper or Protector. And as a female in an ever-lasting patriarchal society, I have been subtly and obtusely learning my whole life to take care of the needs of others before my own. As a child, I was given baby dolls and taught to play "house," aka "mother." I was told I'd be a good teacher or nurse. Meanwhile, my brothers were given Lego's and hockey sticks, and were told they'd be great engineers and doctors.  The messages are all around us and have been invading our psyche for centuries: a woman's role in life is to support and nurture. Women who exceed these constructs to become the CEOs, prosecutors, head surgeons, etc, are way more often than not considered masculine, cut-throat, and bitchy, reaffirming a woman's rightful place is merely next to the head of the table.

Whether or not I'm bitchy, I do fit the stereotype of what a woman should be - I work in "support services" within my organization, I genuinely love helping other people, I like to clean and cook and buy pretty flowers, and with my devout femininity, I wanted to be a good girlfriend to Mr T. So when I saw he was weak and exposed, I wanted to be the one to give him strength. I let him determine the parameters of our relationship - I tried not to argue with him that staying legally married to his wife was unfair to me, and I kept my mouth shut about living with him so his family wouldn't judge him for moving on so quickly and seriously with another woman. When he slipped and call his ex-wife "Baby" in my presence (because of course I was expected to hang out with them and be her friend, as she was still his best friend), it was wrong for me to feel hurt. "It was just a slip," Mr T would say, "it's just an automatic thing to call her, out of habit." And when I was hurt too much by it all, and shed tears or even yelled in anger, he'd deflect my feelings with, "You're getting crazy. Calm down. I'm not going to talk to you if you're going to be like that."

Was I crazy?

It's quite an anomaly to me that so many relationships take this route, with one person having liberty to feel any emotion that comes to him, acting out on his feelings with any behavior that he sees fit, while the other person feels her side of the story doesn't matter at all. When I look at the big picture of these relationships, I don't see any actual, mutual compromise going on. Yet I hear stories like this so frequently, and all the women say they're doing their good deed by putting his needs before her own - compromising. I've heard these stories through my friends, in case studies about domestic abuse, and in articles about the psychology of women. Check out "The Stiff Upper Lip: A Man's Condition and a Woman's Burden" by Yashar Ali for another look into this cultural phenomenon.

Just as frequently as I hear these stories, I hear women steadfastly excusing men's bullshit, uncompromising behavior by saying things like "he just had such a long hard week at work, he's stressed out," or "we've got a vacation together coming up, and if things don't get better after that, maybe then I'll tell him how I feel." I know I made these excuses countless times with Mr T.

In these situations, compromise is completely ineffective; women are not giving up one thing while their men give up another as a way to meet their shared goals. The compromise is one sided. And women are not compromising just for the sake of their relationships, but for the sake of mankind, ensuring men don't have to take responsibility for their unloving, uncompromising behavior. Women are simply compromising everything.

I feel like I compromised my entire self for the sake of being in a relationship with Mr T, and in doing so, I yielded, and really lost, my self respect. I lost the value of my values as I sanctified his.

When I finally came to my senses and we were breaking up, I told Mr T how I felt that I was simply a catalyst for him, that I helped him overcome the heart break and depression of going through a divorce, and now that he had readjusted to a life without the comforts of marriage, he'd be able to move onto his next relationship with freedom and ease. He tried to assure me that that was not true, that he needed to be single and heal from the loss of our relationship, but sure enough, even before I was able to move all my things out of our apartment, he was dating someone new, unabashed and exalted.

It's clear to me that Mr T didn't take the time to learn anything from our relationship or how manipulative his actions and inactions were, but I learned a lot.  In the time that has lapsed sense our break-up, I have relearned the value of my values.  I have learned what compromise is, and what it isn't. And I have recognized that to be a good person, let alone girlfriend, I need to take care of my needs before I attend to anyone else's.

In looking towards new relationships, I can see the big difference between making healthy compromises with my partner and compromising my self. While I will always appreciate a man being open and vulnerable, because being vulnerable is being real and genuine, I will not fall for him simply because he can wear his heart on his sleeve. I will not make it my job to fix him or mend his psychoses. But, with the right person, I will effortlessly make him a better man, just as he will unintentionally make me a better woman. 

With the right person, a compromise won't feel so much like a surrender. If I have to manage the men in my life with a firmer stance, or if I have to avoid certain men all together, so be it, as long as it leads me to finding someone who can appreciate me for who I am and where I've been, because compromising my ideals and my soul again is undoubtedly out of the question.

Journal of a Solitary Sick Girl

“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go. ”

“I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.” 

― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

It's day 7 of my attempts to survive my new found malady.  I have been curled up in bed all day except for the 2 hour adjournment to the doctor's office this morning, where I filled an "emergency slot" due to the 5 separate ailments plaguing me. When the receptionist booked my appointment earlier this morning I could hear a single tear form in the corner of her eye then slowly trickle down her cheek as she said, "You poor thing, you have all that going on? No kidding you've had better days." I reassured her that I've been bed-ridden for a week already, so this is actually a good day since I'm ever so slowly healing. But her sympathy was exactly the right stroke for me at 8:33am; it's good to start out the day knowing someone out there cares and doesn't want you feeling pain. In this way, today has been better than most.

Perhaps the worst day of an illness is the pre-day. That's the day you vaguely start to take notice that you're not quite top-notch. That day for me was last Tuesday. I woke up fine, got to work early, trotted along with my typical Tuesday tasks... and then at about noon I felt a curious scratch in my throat. My lunch break was a trip to CVS for cough drops and milk chocolate - one of them was sure to slay the subtle yuck - but after trying one of each, I knew with all my sickly wisdom that I was sailing straight into a storm. By 3pm I could no longer bare the swirling tides within me. My throat was tense with anticipation, my shoulders ached and heaved skyward to brace what was ahead. So I scurried home in search for higher ground.

Home. That little, 400 square foot studio apartment with creaky floors and a chainsaw radiator and windows so thin you can feel the wind speed change when someone sneezes outside on the street. That place where you can't operate the toaster and the microwave at the same time or you'll blow a fuse.  That place where you better love taking boiling hot showers or freezing cold showers, because there is no in-between. That is my home; that is the place I've tucked myself into, holding on for dear life for the last 7 days, a hermit in a crowded city.

The night of the pre-day was also the morning of the first day of the end of the world. And that could still be true for all you know. The night started me with chills and aches that I tried to muzzle with cotton and fleece covered with wool. Still, my teeth chattered. I buried myself under my sheets, blanket, down comforter, and wool blanket on top of that, and I let the fabrics mute my moaning as to not disturb the street traffic below. But in all that self-comforting and nuzzling, sleep would not be had. I think my temperature only rose to 100.8 as I shed every thread of fabric in a 3 foot radius of my body, but it felt like I was a frog slowly boiling to death, senseless and unable to jump out and rescue myself. The moderate fever, like the moderate life, seems the most demanding to tolerate. I found myself madly ruminating about how lovely it would be to have a real burning fever, as though I was tracing Kerouac's prose in On The Road, but instead of talking about people burning with passion, I substituted my own despair, inwardly chanting, "the only ailments for me are the mad ones, the ones that are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars;" If my temperature was at least 103 I could get some sleep! Instead my night invoked brave patience until it met the dawn and I could moderately sweat myself to my doctor's.

It was Wednesday when they ran the first strep test, which came back negative minutes later. It is because of situations like this that I've determined the practice of medicine is no more impressive than it is for some slummy guy on the corner convincing a tourist his Mike Bidlo is a Jackson Pollock. It is always a guessing game based on appearances, and no matter what the facts, doctors will try to convince you they know better. "Your strep test was negative," the nurse said, "but it still looks like strep, so take these antibiotics and we'll call you in a few days to somehow prove it is what we say it is."

Then the cough set in. It was mild since the pre-day, but with swollen, patchy tonsils, a good strong cough was too difficult to embrace. As the swelling subsided, the full force of my cough took siege.  I coughed and coughed until I vomited, and then I coughed some more. I coughed up saliva, I coughed up phlegm, and I coughed up blood. And that ain't no strep talking! But because I so badly wanted to believe in the practice of medicine, and believe my doctor was appropriately taking care of me, I refused to treat my symptoms like the flu because what I had was bacterial, and I had antibiotics for that. And for 3 more days I hacked and moaned and buried myself under the sheets.

On Saturday morning, after still not hearing from my doctor's office to find out the results of the culture on my throat, I dialed them and left an urgent message. Then 2 hours later, just as I was about to call them again, just as my mom was calling me to make sure I wasn't dead, and just as I was about to sob to her that I thought I was dying, my doctor called me back. "You have strep," she exclaimed. "Significant growth. Keep taking your antibiotics."

"But doctor!" I retorted, "I can't stop coughing. I'm coughing up blood!"

"Well," she replied, "I can prescribe you a cough syrup, too?"

According to all the online health sites, strep does not ever entail a cough.  My doctor-friend recited her knowledge, "FACE: Fever, Absence of cough, Cervical lympadenopathy and Exudates on tonsils. That's the pneumonic to diagnose strep. NO COUGH." And my brother-doctor also offered his two cents, saying that from 2500 miles away, he could tell I had a virus. So maybe I have both?

It's been 4 full days of hiding in my sickly solitude at this point in the story, and it is nauseating to continue typing on about it.  I've been sick, that much is obvious. How many more words can there be to describe the misery? Regretfully, there are a few more, and I must use my finger jabber to distract myself from the inflamed and oozing affliction sitting upon me; writing is my way to survive it after all.

So, still stuck in Saturday, fatigued from my uneducated quarrel on bacteria versus virus, I woke up from a short nap with a blood shot eye and yellow tears. I tried to call my doctor's office back but it closed at noon. Luckily there was an on-call nurse available, and I exasperatedly drew the picture for her, "You see, it LOOKS like pink eye, thus I have pink eye, too," and she called in some more antibiotic eye drops to the pharmacy. Of course, pink eye can be bacterial or viral, so the weight of my quarrel pressed on.

My friends and readers, you must understand, after all the health problems I have had the luck to survive in the last 2 years, I have developed a dark sense of humor about sickness. I always expect the worst, and perhaps I should be ashamed of that because positivity is a powerful healer itself, but when one thing goes wrong, I've learned to never say "it can only get better from here." God is watching, and he likes to test that theory. When 2 things go wrong? It can still get worse. When 3 things go wrong? It can still get worse...

So when I woke up in the middle of the night moving on to Sunday, I was not surprised when my left eye was glued shut and blood started pouring (not even trickling) out my nose. I was not surprised later in the day when I realized the sharp pain in my ass was not just a fissure, it's another hemorrhoid. I was not surprised at the same time when I discovered the antibiotics I have been on have given me a yeast infection. There is no surprise left in me, I am very matter of fact, according to appearances, learning to lose.

"You poor thing, you have all that going on? No kidding you've had better days," the receptionist said this morning. No, ma'am, I do not kid. And my doctor later confirmed it, I do have a bacterial infection AND a viral infection. And even a fungal for good measure.

I'm taking 6 prescriptions for my strep, flu, pink eye, hemorrhoid and yeast infection. I'm faithful to my probiotics, even though it would not surprise me at all if I get C. Diff again and need that dreaded fecal transplant. I'm still taking my stool softeners, my omega-3s, and my St. John's Wart to keep my depression in check through it all. I am still stuck in bed, and I don't know how long it'll last.

I do know this solidarity is not a choice, and I hope tomorrow this, too, shall pass.