the musings of one who spends 88% of her time on a couch in her basement

I got surgery two weeks ago. They fixed a hole in the bone of my right ankle, smoothed it out, filled it in.

I lived with constant pain for a week, but the pain subsided. I lived in a drug induced haze for four days (and had really trippy visions of Clifford the big red dog) but then I ran out of pain medication. I went through withdrawals that made me literally want to light myself on fire (don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school.) and then that ended too.

And after all that, can I catch a break? Oh course not! My great aunt died, my friends stopped visiting, I finished season 2 of Dr. Who and cried way too many tears about that, and I got really bad acid reflux from ibuprofen. I felt useless and worthless and lonely and sad.

Today was my first checkup since the surgery. I got put in a boot -and it hurt me so bad that I nearly threw up from the pain. I have exercises to do but I can't even move my foot on its own. I got pretty discouraged.

You're all thinking "wow, that sounds awful."And probably a lot of you are thinking, "why the heck are you telling me? This whole post is just a lot of complaining."

Well, you're right. I'm complaining a lot. I'm being honest, though - this has not been an easy ride. It's actually been pretty horrible. My tiny body has been through more the past two weeks than I think it had ever been through before. I have fought to stay positive and happy throughout all of it, but the truth is, that's really not possible for me. I cannot be perpetually happy. Neither can you, and neither can anybody.

But that's okay. Contrary to the popular idea that your feelings are always a choice, I believe that you can't always choose what you feel about certain situations. You can't make yourself happy when you're just not.

But here's what you can do. You can decide what sadness and discouragement and fear does to you. Does it paralyze you? Do you sit around in a stupor - or do you get up, get moving, and try to forget you're hurting by doing something that's not focused on your pain?

Now, I understand there's cases where you're physically debilitated by your emotions (or in some situations, the lack thereof) and of course I don't mean those cases.

But - for those less severe cases - if there's anything this surgery taught me, it's that you will feel sad and ugly and lonely and afraid. That's fine. But you can function within those things. You can still do things. You can love others and be kind to them even if you're angry. You can fight fear, and you could lose. What I'm saying is, you can feel what you feel and that's healthy, but you also get to choose your reaction to those feelings, and your reaction should be active rather than passive. Don't wallow in your feelings for too long. You will marinate in them until you can't separate who you are from your emotions. Instead of just feeling sad, you become a sad person. Instead of feeling angry, you become bitter. Your emotions will become traits that will affect your relationships with others, which is really what life is all about.

In conclusion: I'm not magically happy again. I still feel lonely, afraid, and occasionally useless. But I have made a decision not to let my feelings control my personality. I promise you that as long as I know who I am, I'll keep fighting. I will try and be happy whenever I can and hope for those times to come again when I'm feeling down. I pledge not to give up on myself, or anyone else.

We've only got one shot at this whole life thing. So much of it depends on what we choose. Don't tell yourself you don't have a choice, because you're wrong. No matter what you feel, you are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.

xoxo,
Miss Em.