I'm slowly rebuilding my strength. I've spent almost a whole year doing as little as possible - except for one thing - focusing on myself.
About this time last year I had so much going on in my life - blogs, reviews, websites - building and maintaining my own as well as developing new sites for friends and family, research, product reviews, contractual obligations, reading, maintaining the FibroMen site, trying to build the FibroMates site and their associated Facebook, Google+ and Twitter accounts - and all the while feeling worse and worse, suffering from agonising pain that not even morphine could counter and sinking further and further into depression and at the same time holding down a physically demanding job and trying to cope with a disabled wife and a disabled daughter, it all just became too much and one day I sought refuge in the form of a little too much medication - cocodamol, morphine, fluoxetine (Prozac) and alcohol. Not an overdose, merely a combination that was too much for my fragile state of mind to handle. I imploded.
The meltdown was so swift and my mood so dark that I shut out everything and everyone - including my wife and, to a lesser degree, my daughter - quite literally overnight. I became obnoxious. My marriage crumbled.
Apparently my whole persona changed. At work I maintained my old jovial, friendly and helpful state, but at home I was rude, indifferent and bullying. I was simply awful. I didn't want to be around my family and I tried my best, it would seem, to make them dislike me so that I could have a valid reason for leaving - there was a deeper issue going on which I can't/won't explain here, but those of you who know me personally are aware of what this issue was. All I will say is that many years, many decades, of pent up emotions and past grievances came bubbling to the surface. I hated myself, my life and everything/everyone in it. I painted on my smile and went to work for sixteen hours a week.
Now I'm getting by. My pain levels are at an all time high because I dare not take morphine again, but I'm getting by without it. I started going to a gym in late summer last year and, whilst this may be adding to my pain, or at least perpetuating it, I have fixed in my mind that the pain is a good sign instead of coming from the unknown like fibromyalgia, and I'm finding it beneficial to improving my strength so I can still work sixteen hours a week in a busy retail role. I look better too, so to hell with the pain!!
As for my marriage - well, I'm still at home. We still row, and my wife is keen to remind me how awful I was, but we're getting by.....
