Schizo

I sometimes feel like i died in a sense in March of 2012. I feel like since i got sick in the midst of going to Georgia Southern, the girl I was , was left there. I went there one way in 2010 and left a totally different way in 2012. I mean this in so many ways; from emotional to health to motherhood to me learning about myself in the hardest way... 

Far before i got pregnant, my mother and I knew there was something wrong with me, as early as age nine , i remember waking up and telling my parents i felt like i was dying or having a heart attack from deep chest pains. They would do test and for the most part they came back normal aside from a really fast heart beat ( a symptom of lupus btw) and told me i had costochondritis   (inflammation of joint that connects the rib to the breast bone also a lupus symptom) which they were right about but they never put those minor symptoms together back then, even calling me a hypochondriac at one point. It took for me getting pregnant at 20, for my body to project the symptoms so severely and get outrageous to actually be diagnosed with lupus. Which is why i felt like it was so viscous when i got pregnant. It was at its rawest form and it had full advantage to consume my body since i wasn't on any medications when i got pregnant or even aware that i had a disease .

It caught me off guard because I wasn't used to it. I didn't have in my then what I have now... When i had my first flare I felt like I'd literally lost my mind.  I didn't feel like me anymore. From February 2012 to being diagnosed in March 2012, was almost like a dream because my declination was so fast. I felt like I literally woke up one day and was never the same. When I was new it to all, I didn't know how to cope, I still wanted to fit in... But instead i was sick and confined to my house and my thoughts were louder than ever. Even after having Hannah, i had to cope again with lupus. I had to learn to live with lupus AND be a mother. I felt like I'd lived three different lives in one year...

The first three years with lupus was hell. It robbed me of so many things.  My health, my hair,my perception of beauty, my motherhood. Why did i have to meet motherhood and lupus at the same time? After i somewhat recovered from having meningitis in my brain, I still had many complications. Having seizures if i just sat up too long, I couldn't eat, and this was just when i'd really just started being affected by transverse myelitis, so my legs were going numb and my walking declined. Watching other people care for my baby, even with them meaning well and having good hearts, it still hurt.I didn't feel like me, or a mother, I just felt weak... 

I didn't know I had to fight not only lupus but for my confidence and happiness. I'd been  through every emotion but happiness was the one emotion i thought lupus took forever. It made me look different and feel different when I'm in flares, almost like I'm schizo. Lupus has a way of bringing out a different side of me. Me being vulnerable in the beginning of this journey, i LET lupus consume me. I LET what the doctors say be true. So its true, I wasn't me in a way but I had to find my way back to me because if i LET those things be true, I would die. My doctors tried to put me on the depression medication Zoloft to calm my anxiety and depression. It absolutely did not work. It made me crazy if anything. That's probably why people that do take those medications are deemed crazy because i have never hallucinated in my life until taking an antidepressant . I soon started back smoking marijuana and that was a more natural way of treating my anxiety and depression. It actually contributed a lot to my healing but thats another blog. 

Finding my way back to myself has been a tough journey, and I'm still on it but I'm on my way. At the beginning of all this, I didn't know how to react because I had never experienced a True loss before. I hadn't experienced any real trauma, so going through a trauma involving me, was hard to accept. Almost as if I've watched myself go and grow this experience with lupus, transverse myelitis , and motherhood , it can sometimes feel like a dream. It used to make me feel like i was out of my mind, like i had split personalities... I just had to learn to balance those roles, the most important role , being a mother. I had to stop letting lupus consume me. I had to stop letting what the doctors tell me get to me. I had to fight to get me back, my confidence and strength, and I did. I stopped being a "Lupus patient" or whatever i had been declared to be, and go back to Gabby. I have to at least try, even on my bad days, I'm even told I sometimes do too much at times, but I can't stay still because I had so much down time my first four years with lupus... Now that I know who am, no matter what i go through, it helps. I thought i knew who I was as a child, but I really got to know myself when life challenged me with a battle i had to face alone. I went through so many different stages and emotions; weakness, anger, confusion, regret, but i had to experience all those things to get to the root of ME. I found strength in Myself. I found Self Love...

FunLupusFact:(Lupus:Latin Meaning Wolf)