Sunday, January 20, 2019

New Year 2019 Update

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday season and are having a good start to 2019. I figured this new beginning was a good time for another update since my blog has had a long silence recently. Overall my life hasn't changed much, I've mostly just had ups and downs with the same issues I've been dealing with (if you haven't already, you can read what I wrote about my health and job issues in previous posts here and here). However, I do have updates in three areas of my life, so I will start with the biggest and most exciting one which is...


Car:

I bought a car! After over five years of not having a car, I finally decided that the time had come. For most of those past five years, it was my own choice not to have a car, and the occasional difficulty of getting around without one didn't bother me that much. However, Hyannis is not the easiest place to get around, especially once it started getting cold and walking to work was not as enjoyable. So after spending over a month looking, I finally found a great car. So without further ado, here's my new car!







It's a 2008 Ford Focus and it only had 122,000 miles on it when I bought it. It's in such good condition I would have never guessed it was 10 years old. It's been so great to have the freedom of being able to go wherever I need to go when I need to go there and not have to worry about if and when the bus can get me places. It also opens up a lot of opportunities for me to get involved in things and go other places on Cape Cod. I just joined a community chorus that I wanted to do in the fall, but I wasn't able to get there because I had no transportation and Uber/Lyft would have been way too expensive.

Car ownership hasn't been all positive though. After the first day of driving around doing errands, it was clear that the seats are not very comfortable and that driving made my back pain worse. For about the first week my pain level increased drastically from driving, and I was devastated that something that should have been so happy seemed to be turning into a nightmare. That first week I even considered asking the dealership if they would buy it back from me, even knowing that I would take a huge financial loss. I began to resent the car for making me hurt, and I dreaded having to get behind the wheel.

But thankfully the pain caused by driving has decreased with the use of a pillow on the seat to help keep my back in a more comfortable position. It's still not perfect, but it's manageable and I'm happy with the car again. And on the topic of back pain, that brings me to my next update, which is...


Back injury:

After being in pain for over a year, doing physical therapy, and only seeing slight incremental improvements in my back pain over the recent months, I finally decided to take my new doctor's advice and get an MRI. The results: I have a bulging disc in my lower back. It's a bit of a relief to finally know for sure what's wrong, and have something definite that I can focus on trying to heal. My doctor is going to refer me to a neural surgeon, even though she said I most likely don't need surgery, so that person can tell me how I can recover.

It's good to know that this is an injury that should eventually heal, but getting the news brought up a lot of the feelings I'd managed to mostly push aside as time went on. Being in at least a small amount of physical pain every day can be very draining, and often it makes me just want to crawl into bed and not do anything when I get home from work. But being in pain isn't even the worst of it. The worst I feel is when I start thinking about all the ways that my pain is holding me back. It totally derailed my career path because everything I have been doing and want to do involves being physically active, and I'm just not capable of doing those things anymore. And since back injuries for many people seem to plague them for the rest of their lives, there's a chance I will never be able to do the things I used to do. When I think back on all the amazing jobs I've had in the last few years and everything I've done, it makes me so depressed to think that I might never have those opportunities again. And I had so many ideas for my future. I'd thought about joining the Peace Corps, hiking the Appalachian Trail, starting to take dance classes again, doing more traveling all over the world. Now all I can think about is the pain those things would cause me. It feels like a wound being reopened every time I start thinking about everything I've potentially lost. I'm trying to accept the fact that this is how my life is now and just work with what I have instead of mourning the loss of my old life, but sometimes that's incredibly hard. I feel like this injury has taken away a part of my identity. I always saw myself as so strong and able, and I prided myself on being a woman who didn't need a man to do the heavy lifting and could show that women aren't weak. I liked bashing stereotypes of what women can and can't do by having jobs that are typically male-dominated. And now I have no choice but to ask other people to help me or tell people I can't lift something that's too heavy, and it pains me mentally and emotionally that it's come to that.

I try to tell myself that things happen for a reason and that something good will come out of this. I've been trying to figure out for a while now what my Plan B is if I'm unable to return to the conservation jobs I was doing before, but so far I haven't come up with a good answer. So for now I'll just go with the flow and continue working where I am until I come up with a different plan. Which brings me to the last part of my update...


My job:

I'm still working at the cafe I've been at since I lost the shellfishing job, and it's been surprisingly enjoyable most of the time, but every so often I have a phase where I feel very unfulfilled and unhappy. And now is one of those. At times like this I start to wonder, what am I doing with my life? Is this really what my life is, serving people coffee and cookies and answering the same questions over and over again? I'm 28 years old, college educated, and I'm working an entry level food service job alongside two teenage high school graduates. I wanted more for my life than this. There's no fulfillment for me in what I do, and I find that I dread new acquaintances asking me what I do for work because I'm not proud of the answer. I don't want people thinking this is all I'm capable of or all I want out of life. But at the same time, I'm lost as to what I actually want to do because the options are limited by my physical capabilities. There's something to be said for the stability of staying where I am, since I'm able to make ends meet just fine with what I'm doing now, but I want more than this. I just don't know what, and finding it sometimes seems so daunting.


I wish this could be a happier update, but that's where I'm at in my life. Some days I get pretty down about where my life has lead, but I do my best to fight back against the negativity. I try to bring a sense of gratitude into my life for all the wonderful things I have to be thankful for, like my family, friends, a roof over my head, the new freedom that comes with having a car, having a job that pays the bills, and many other things. I've been taking some yoga classes, and I usually feel better both physically and mentally after a class, so hopefully I can keep that up. 2018 was a very difficult year for me (I can easily say it was the worst year of my life), so I'm hopeful that 2019 will be a much better year for me and that things will start to fall into place. Thank you as always for reading. Wishing you all the best in the new year!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Lindsay,
    I love your new car. Hopefully that little pillow trick will be just the thing. Also your back might get used to the car, who knows? I know too well what it is like to suffer through back pain. I was in the bed for about 3 months straight and then on Vicodin for about another six months after that just so i could work. Luckily, I didn't get addicted! All that to say that I understand how awful back pain. I am so sorry that it continues to be a part of your life.
    If your car starts to make it worse, the best thing to do is to trade it in. It would be worth the expense. I hope you will come see us. At least in July for "The Big Party" if not before.
    Love you!
    Bonnie

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    1. Thanks for the support Bonnie! The pillow has done a great job and thank goodness I did get used to the car and the pain with driving has gone away. My back in general has been feeling much better over the past month or so, and I'm so grateful for the improvement!
      I hope to see you soon! I'm going to do my best to be at the party!

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