"If you're going through hell, you've got to just keep on going"

When I was a little girl, an adult of the family once told me "If you're going through hell, you've got to just keep on going, If you stop dead in your tracks, that is where you'll stay." I remembered this simple, yet great, advice throughout my life, and I can't remember much from childhood except for pain of course, so that should say a lot about how dear to my heart I held these words. I don't know where I'd be right now if those words were never spoken to me. I called upon these words many, many times for strength when I wanted nothing more than to just give up and well, stop dead in my tracks! I must have been not a day older than 4 years old when I started to tell my mother of the pain in my finger joints when I bent them or scratched my head. I remember very vividly telling her over and over and over again. Then came kindergarten, and not being able to sit "criss-cross-apple-sauce"/ "Indian-style" on the circular rug during story time. I felt so different, so weird. Like an alien. I often wondered on the bus to school in the mornings: "Will the teacher call my Mom because I refuse to sit on the rug? Will the teacher yell at me? Will she think i just want attention? And will all the other kids think i'm just a big weirdo?" Thoughts like these ones came into my head daily. Still, though, I refused to sit this way. It literally made me want to scream with my legs crossed, and if I did happen to manage sitting like that for anything over a few minutes, I had extreme trouble uncrossing them and standing back up again. Watching all of the other children, jump up with ease, no problem at all, no holding back tears ready to stream heavily down their faces as I did daily, I felt it was just so unfair. I felt like an old lady. I was 5! No child deserves to go through that, non the less adults!  I continued to warn my mother that something very, very wrong had happened to my body and that I could tell it wasn't going to stop. And as I would tell her these things, I would start to cry and look into her big, brown eyes. I could see it hurt her that I hurt, and I could see she really didn't have a damn clue of what to do about it. My father wouldn't pay for me to see a DR., and when he finally did years later, the DR.'s would simply chalk it up to "normal growing pains that most children experience." time and time again! No blood tests, no examinations, nothing. I could only imagine what most of these doctors throughout my life were really thinking! "She must be so starved of attention!" I can't even begin to tell you just how many people have actually said things like that to me later on in my life. And I certainly can't begin to tell you just how many people would take it a step further to give me what they thought was amazing advice, the secrets that nobody else knew or realized, things like "Exercise more", "Eat better", "You just aren't getting enough sleep", "Take care of your body and it will take care of you in return", "If you think negative, of course you're going to feel negative! Think and be positive!", Or "You just need to change your mind set and stop forcing yourself to believe you're sick! The mind is tricky, and it's stronger than you think." And then there was always those people who simply just said something along the lines of  "Oh, stop your whining, already! Give me a damn break! You are FINE!" If only they knew. And if only I could just make myself "fine" again. And don't even get me started on gym class and the gym instructors! So, here comes middle school and I am so exhausted, so tired of pretending to be fine that I convince myself that I just don't need school anymore. It's doing me worse, not better, and it isn't serving me in anyway, so why keep going? I can't stay awake no matter how much sleep i get, and when i'm not sleeping at my desk I can't sit still and i'm constantly squirming and switching positions to stop my body from aching and throbbing, and I can't even begin to focus on and of my school work non the less homework because i'm a complete physical, mental, emotional, spiritual wreck! Now add the teachers criticism and misunderstandings, add the teachers bad attitudes towards me for feeling that i'm just lazy or disobedient, add the other students staring at me like a freak and judging me, add the students who bullied me non stop for simply being different than them, add having hardly any friends ever due to the fact I just couldn't keep up with them, add all the non existent support from family, add my father telling me to stop whining all of the time as if i were only making it up in my head, add the constant and weird physical pain and other weird ailments that popped up all over the place (which in hindsight seemed and looked totally unrelated to whatever it was that was causing me to be so weak, tired, and pained), and then, add the ever growing daily amounts of anxiety and the ever growing fog i was stumbling through (which later i learned was called "brain fog"), and finally, add my memory which was growing poorer and poorer by the day. My childhood was one big mess or fear, resentment, loneliness, hopelessness, depression, tears, pain, and fatigue. I must have been 16 when I finally realized my brain had been totally effected- I was walking up the staircase to our apartment, as I did when I had to, and suddenly just "forgot" for a lack of better word, how to simply lift my foot and place it on the step! I must have sat there for what seemed like a good 5 minutes just trying to figure out how to climb stairs again. It felt as if I were a toddler and it was my first time ever doing it! When I finally remembered, I was in shock and didn't understand what just happened. I went to tell my mother, and I could see this look in her eyes, on her face, that screamed she knew what was wrong with me. And I think by then, as did I, I just wasn't ready to accept it yet. See, my older brother was diagnosed with Lyme disease when he was not even 16 years old, and they estimated he contracted it when he was very young, just as they think I did. (My guess is that we both got it around the same time, but when he was 16 I was still only 10 or so, so they actually caught his sooner than they caught mine in the amount of how many years after we were bitten.) So, my mother was pretty familiar with the symptoms of Lyme by now, because of what she went through with my brother for years. She witnessed his decline, and multiple treatments, and she still hates remembering the IV treatments. It was just so rough, and my brother was bed-ridden for quite a long time. She must have felt so helpless as a mother through those horrible years. In all actuality, maybe she also didn't want to admit that's what was most likely wrong with me, in fear of what was to come. It makes perfect sense. Who wants to watch not only one child, but two, suffer like that for years upon years, with the possibility that they'll never even really get better? What mother would want to admit that their last glimmer of hope of a good life for their children is dead and gone? I know I certainly wouldn't. So, although sometimes I find it easy to resent her for not trying to find me a better doctor sooner or for not pushing these doctors to test me, I still have to consider what she was going through and the pain she must have felt from it all. I have to give her credit, too. She is a wonderful mother, regardless of whatever mistakes she has made along the way. We all make mistakes.   ......To Be Continued Later...