sickness.

Wanna know something weird? It has been about a year and a half since I had the concussion and started getting really dizzy and the whole time, I have felt like I can't talk about it because I make if I talk about it I make it real. Like how people in Harry Potter can't mention Voldemorts name.

I can talk about it now and I don't feel a gut wrenching pain.

I'm going to tell you a secret, and I'm kinda almost hoping no one reads these blogs cos it is hard to write about.

This is no ordinary sickness for me. Maybe any one else could cope with feeling dizzy and nauseous a lot. I was really bad at the end of last year. If I went up the stairs I would feel nauseous and dizzy and have to lie down, just going up and down stairs!!!

I don't cope as well because as long as I could remember I have had this crippling fear of vomiting. I am a lot better than I used to be. At least I think I am. When I was eleven I couldn't even go into public toilets for fear that I would hear someone throwing up. It was completely irrational. I was petrified of seeing someone else throw up and if I did I would be hysterical and feel so afraid even for months afterwards.

So then you can understand why a problem that makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I go for a car ride or a long walk or put out the washing or walk up and down the stairs is a particular torture for me.

It is not just battling a sickness, but also battling a constant and I mean constant, never ending fear of it. At the same time I am at a loss to explain to people around me, my family why I find it so hard to just "push through and get on with my life."

I struggled like this really badly for about a year before I discovered I was making myself sick on tabelets.

since then I have been recovering but I still get dizzy a lot and struggle with carsickness a lot.
I have a long road to go.

My monster.

There is a monster living in me.
he is a silent scream.
Every time I go out,
I have to box my monster in
tell him to remember his manners in public
so people don't think I'm crazy.

He is always there with me
when I laugh and when I cry.
Sometimes when I am alone,
he tries to eat me alive.
Or poison me,
screaming all the time...
can't be good for your insides.

I'm not afraid of my monster,
I know he is just there to tell me something
to remind me that I'm hurting
hiding from the real monster.

All my monster does is explain that
I am just afraid that I won't be ok
that I will just be left this way
sick,
bitter
left behind whilst everyone lives their lives,
growing old without ever having lived.

Mostly I can laugh and feel ok
I live with my monster, my companion,
a friend in some twisted way.

But sometimes I feel like a whisp of smoke
puff and I blow away,
a faded grey.
But only sometimes.

Healing.

Talk about a difficult subject for me.

It is probably the most significant theme of my life at the moment and has been for about a year and a half. Ever since I got sick. I started narrating it even.

Here is what I began to write about when I first got sick, the details aren't entirely true and neither is the name but this is kind of what happened to me:

She woke up from her sleep rested and peaceful. After a few minutes of drifting between a place of sleep and awareness she sat up in bed and stretched her arms, feeling energized and ready for a new day.

However, Cassie noticed that her head felt slightly heavy got and as she got out of bed, the world swayed slightly. She puzzled. She bent over to pick up the book she had been reading the night before and as she came up, a wave of dizziness hit her hard. Then she began to remember…

The bus had seemingly come out of nowhere as she crossed the road yesterday. The brakes screeched as the bus came towards her, but it was going to fast to miss. It hit her, just on her shoulder and knocked her back. She had fallen over and hit and her head on the pavement. The moments after that were a little fuzzy in her memory.

But she had been reasonably ok in the afternoon and evening after the accident. She had gotten in her car and driven home with no major side effects bar a sore shoulder. It had been such a relief.

But now she felt a tinge of unease as she got up out of bed. She spent a few minutes deciding if she should wear a vest or a scarf with her long sleeved white cotton shirt, jeans and her favorite dark brown knee high boots. She then headed into the bathroom to brush her long brown hair. However as she looked in the mirror she noticed that again the world was swaying slightly side to side. It bothered her.

She had just come back from a year adventuring in Melbourne, living at the beach, studying in late and studying a course in youth work. So that day she set about looking to find a job and trying to decide whether to continue doing more study or not. As she sifted through different newspapers and articles on different Bachelors degrees, she was slightly nauseated.

Her shoulder was smarting as well, so she organized to go to the family chiropractor that she had been going to for as long as she could remember. She had never trusted anyone more with her health than Terry. He always seemed to have a knack to understand the medical problems in her life that even Doctors had overlooked.

She drove off her in her small blue Daihatsu not realizing how significant this drive would be. She struggled as she was driving to. Within minutes of the drive she became dizzy and she started feeling sicker and sicker. She made it just to chiropracter before she lost her breakfast.

Terry came over, a concerned look on his face. Cassie grimaced and straightened up, letting him lead her into the examination room. After a few minutes of prodding and poking, Terry tapped his pen and promtly said "Cass, you've had a concussion. It is going to take you a little while to recover."

It didn't take just a little while. It took years.


Ok so I didn't have a car accident exactly, but I was hit on the head and ended up with a concussion. But what was really difficult was the dizziness. I struggled with it for years and as we later discovered it continued because of this medication I was taking. See it was an antioxident, and I thought that it was all natural, but it wasn't. So i was effectively poisoning myself every day with this stuff.

But the symtoms were what was difficult to deal with. I seemed to have pretty major dizziness and carsickness. If I took just one ten minute car ride I would literally feel lightheaded and dizzy and nausous for hours afterwards. Honestly, I ended up walking most places because I couldn't travel really without medication.

Is it a little strange to write a story like that about that first day of sickness??? I was going to continue on a while a whole I don't know, something. It is just that that first day was so real in my memory.

It really turned into something of a nightmare. For the first forty days and forty night I would wake up every morning and not feel like it was real. Like it wasn't happening to me. It just felt so surreal.

I quit my job, I deferred my uni course, I cleared my calender and gave myself one objective: to recover. Little did I know just how long it would take

Healing Eve

Healing Eve

Her name is ‘Beautiful,’
her heart shines openly.
Oh she is beautiful.
Her eyes grow bright in sweet delight,
feasting on life’s intricacies.

She burns with love
and dances free,
in a twirling skirt,
in the open sea.

Her heart is life’s pride,
as she nurtures fiercely.
Children, animals, plants,
she holds to her breast,
as she lets lifein soft surrender
rest.

But no more beautiful is she,
than when she is at peace,
encircled in nature’s sweet serenity.
Oh irenic!
Your soul becomes at ease
as she lets all anxiety
be enveloped overwhelmed
by her delicate beauty.

Soft curls cascading,
her smooth skin cooling.
She smilesand you soar.
For she is the incarnate form
of tenderness and mercy,
of deep unveiling mystery.

My darling, she is you.
My darling, my sister my bride, you.
See she was left desolate,
called unlovely

Her heart was broken,
fear awoken
her soul raped savagely.
She stood alone in tattered clothes
and wept so bitterly.

Her daddy never loved her,
her husband called her names.
Her world went grey in pain
and she became ugly
as all her beauty waned.

But she is.
Oh she is and longs to be
Beautifuland offer it freely.

So tear apart the scars
smash the façade.
Open up the wounds
and welcome all the pain.
Embrace the ugliness.
Lure the beauty as it lays.
Pursue her, romance her,
fight for her beauty
and it will pour like rain.

And life and love and healing
will name her‘Beautiful’ again.