Baby steps 1/27/12-1/29/12

This journey I have started to take is going to be long.  It will be hard.  It will not happen overnight. I am going forward. Taking my baby steps one days at a time.  There are times in the day that I barely make it thru the day without thinking about how I can hide and not have to face things. So I guess you could say I make a slow forward but it is forward. I am learning along my journey that I began to hide somehow behind my disability in the last few years.  I should have used it to grow from, but instead I ran, hid in a shell and locked my fears, my feelings of failures, of worries ..... just everything became closed and locked up. I found my escape.  I have to force myself right now to talk to people.  I rather be alone, and all by myself which is kind of not me, but I am overwhelmed by my feelings. I know many of my friends wonder how fast I can recover, but this will not be a quick recovery, this will take time.  I have a lot I kept hidden.  One thing I could say in advice is never hide how you feel.  Talk about it to someone.  Don't use things to hide how you feel.  My journey is mine alone.  No one can walk it for me.  I have to take it.  I have to walk it.  I know I neurologically will not be perfectly right for the rest of my life.   My right side seems to be the one affected most.  How am I going to deal with it?  I do not want to be like I am.  One thing though is hiding how you feel only causes more harm then good, I know that now.  I know too that I want to be the best I can be and there is more life left for me but my hiding is how I lost out on living.  I was asked friday by my PCP why I decided to finally get help.....I did not want to keep living like this.  I want to live.  I just need to figure out how now...what I can do.  I will always miss being an LNA because face it.....I loved being one and I was great at it, but there is still more left for me to be great at it....guess I just got scared.  I also too do not want to lose the respect of her, my family, my friends, I mean I had already stopped respecting myself, but I especially did not want to lose the respect, trust of the one doctor who for the last several years has meant more to me than he will ever know because of his care for me thru the years, and his concern for me for the road I was going.....it was that final push that just, I could not stay like I was. It was time for me to get help, to admit what was going on. See, I have a lot of doctors and specialists but he is the one doctor who knows me best, who has sat with me and we have had those open and honest talks, and basically you could say he "has my back" and I trust him more than any other doctor because of the relationship we have established over the years.  Now, I am on the hardest journey of my life and believe me it is one that I am not taking lightly. But I go forward....one day at a time, and the steps may seem wobbly and as baby steps at first, but if I am going forward, then I know I am going in the right direction.