39.

I just reread my post from exactly one year ago titled “38.”

I had wished a year ago that in a year my life would have changed.

However, I could have copied and pasted the majority of the post for this one titled “39.”

Last night as our company was getting ready to leave, I could feel the fire beginning to grow in my foot. Within an hour I was in tears, screaming words and asking why. I cried for hours and throughout the night. It was definitely the worse flare up I have had in well over a year. It hit out of nowhere.

I told my husband at 4 a.m. that it wasn’t my birthday. I did not want anything to do with it. I laid in bed for hours this morning not wanting to get up because I just didn’t want to start my day.

From sunrise today until bed time I sat here in this big quiet house with just my thoughts and my pain as my companions. It’s a dark place.

In that place it’s hard to battle the thoughts coming from the dark when you have screams of pain and tears streaming down.

Much of the day the only sound was the occasional chirp from my phone with another birthday message coming through. So many messages of wishing I was having a pain free day and/or was feeling better with each day.

Each one brought me tears. Tears of gratitude, but also tears of sadness and hopelessness and fear.

You know exactly one year ago, I ended my birthday blog post saying that I promised my thirty-eighth year was to be a year of great self-discovery, love, strength and growth.

It’s the third birthday in a row I have spent on my couch in a war with something fierce.

All day today, as I tried to fight the dark thoughts in my head, I tried to think about what I wanted out of this next year.

But, it has to be something I can control; I cannot set a goal to be pain-free.

All I can really say is I want to become a CRPS THRIVER.

It seems far off in the distance, there’s a lot of mental and emotional growth needed but I can only hope when I sit down to write a blog post titled “40” I can say despite it all, whatever battle I had, I thrived in life a lot more than I have the last three years.

Now, back to the quiet and stillness of a house as I continue to breathe through pain that I can only describe as a piece of heavy machinery on each side of my foot pushing in and crushing my bones, a knife stabbing up near my toes and my skin burning so intensely I want to peel it off.

Until Next Time-