I am a living barometer

It's raining again. It's been raining for 3 days now, and I'm not happy about it. Anyone who has ever sprained an ankle or broken a finger knows that it aches when it rains. When it's your whole body that hurts, the rain can be hard to take. And after a few days of it, I'm sure it's never going to stop and my pain level is never going to go back down. Somewhere in my head I know that the sun will come out again and I'll feel better, but when I'm in the middle of the most painful days, all I can see is the rain.

Perhaps this is the best lesson in living the good days. I have days when the pain is not as intense as others, and I always have to remember to live those days to the fullest. It's another thing that I learned when I was in my personal black hole. I didn't leave my bed much for a few years, and you know what? I hurt anyway. Staying in bed didn't really make the pain any better. It just left me angry and depressed, with no life. So now, on my "not so bad" days, I try to do some things that I enjoy. At least then I've had some good times to go with my crappy rainy days.

So maybe the point is to live life as much as you can. There will always be bad days, but you have to make the good days in between. The good days don't just come to me, I have to go out and create them when I'm given a day that is "not so lousy" on the pain scale.

As for the terrible pain days, like when it's raining, I just do the best I can to not let the pain get out of control. Staying in control is key, and really tough sometimes. There are times when the pain gets on top of me and I can't even catch my breath. All I can think is "God, just give me an hour off to get it back together." But I don't ever get that hour off, or any time off, the pain is constant, there is nowhere to go to get away from it. So I hang on and wait for a better day. It will come.