hun-ger; -verb: to have a compelling need or a strong desire

When I was 11 years old and got the "curse", I complained about pain and feeling tired and feeling nauseated all the time. I thought I was probably dying of some dread disease. I got a lot of "it's all in your head" or "I think you're a hypochondriac". 3 or 4 days of every month I skipped school and lay in bed. Curled into a ball. I felt sick. No big deal was made about it. I didn't get a lot of sympathy and after awhile it just became a part of my life. I CHOSE to ignore it. Or complain about it and do nothing. A few years later I wound up in the Emergency Room with a blood count of 15 and was told that if I had ignored it until Monday, I would have died from blood loss.

Endometriosos was the diagnosis. Probably had it from the first few years of my menstrual cycle...it has mysterious little symptoms like pain, nausea, fatigue...hmm.....so it's like REAL? REALLY REAL? You mean, I'm vindicated? There was really something WRONG with me?

So when I started feeling tired like "collapse on the couch and die tired" or when I started feeling pain in my right side. When I just felt "sick" I ignored it. For a year, I ignored it and then I started thinking about the doctor saying "if you'd ignored it much longer, you would be dead."

When I finally decided to GO to the doctor, I almost felt guilty. I didn't want to hear "it's all in your head, you hypochondriac drama queen. I didn't tell anybody until my doctors started saying things like "these numbers are "alarming" or "we need to send you to another specialist". And even then, I said things like "just a little blood work...it's no big deal..."

And I started to feel that way...it's no big deal. I even had a liver biopsy, which up to this point in my life has been the most traumatic, horrific thing that's ever happened to me. The doctor that performed the procedure should burn in hell. The diagnosis was a chronic and progressive liver disease. Still my attitude has been "eh...whatev." A few meds here and there, some blood work every once in awhile. No big deal.

But NOW...it's 7 years later....I am almost 40 years old, which sounded OLD until I got here. My daughter IZ is 18 and done with high school and I kinda wanna be around to see where she goes from here. I met and now live with the most wonderful man in the universe and I am helping him raise his fabulous daughters who I have come to love as much as IZ, which I didn't know was possible. My life is crazy busy and full of ups and downs and drama and just.....STUFF!

We have PLANS, man, PLANS! We want to travel. Play with our grandchildren. Buy a house. Go on cruises. Take road trips. LIVE our lives to the fullest! Cuz to be perfectly honest, we have WASTED so much TIME! Instead of cherishing every precious moment of our lives, even the hard ones, I feel like all we have done is BITCH AND MOAN! And WORK OUR ASSES OFF!

We are just now figuring out how GREAT our kids are! Most of the time. And how much we want them around! I am a step-grandma for pete's sake! I have a grandson. He so much as yawns and I am GIDDY with happiness! It's effing ridiculous! It makes no sense and yet, there it is. I'll be so damn happy when June has her baby in October I won't be able to stand myself.

But I'm not feeling too hot these days. I feel...sick. And my blood work isn't looking that great. And I'm scared. I don't want to die of a DISEASE. It's ugly. It's an ugly way to die. And it hurts people, it hurts the people I care about. And I don't know what to do and I don't know how to deal...

Then this morning I read THIS:

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that grows in us all. -Richard Wright, American Hunger

Well, damn...

I hurl my words into darkness everyday. I hear my echos loud and clear. Whether I want to or not. And right now, my own words are screaming back at me that I should stop whining and not give in to the darkness.

Everything will turn out the way that it should, right? And whether I'm 50 or 80 I want my loved ones to say, "She marched, she fought, she hungered for life....and she had a beautiful life."