DEAR THYROID^TM

Living out loud is messy.  Actively healing our illnesses is messier yet!

Several friends listened to me lately– truly listened to me.  And I had the opportunity to offer the same to them.  Suddenly everything reciprocated instead of ducking away from me. And I realized that listening and healing and reciprocating with each other is WHY we are alive.  We are supposed to LIVE OUT LOUD – IN INK.  We are supposed to make a mess of it. And then clean it up. And then the cry over the mess. And then laugh at ourselves for crying.  THIS IS OUR JOB!!!

And we are doing fabulously.  Even when we are fucking up we are doing a great job.

We are supposed to make a giant mess of life and then look at the tangled up clusterfuckery and roll it up into a ball and use it as a mop for the rest of the spills! LIFE IS A BIG BEAUTIFUL MESS. Sometimes it can only be viewed that way in retrospect.

I remember blogging angrily in college about a friend who tossed her cookies on my car window instead of opening the car door and stepping out. The response from readership was overwhelming.  People were so happy. They wrote – “THIS IS IT- THIS IS FRIENDSHIP! These are beautiful memories you will never get back!” They were so happy that I cleaned up my friend’s vomit and put her to bed.  They were laughing at my story- but also at the friendship connection.  Only a real friend would clean up another friend’s body fluids and put them to bed.

It took me until recently to realize why readers were so overjoyed.  Because they realized LIFE IS MESSY.  Life is a puppy chewing up a 5 cent pen on your beautiful Turkish rug.  Life is your toddler smashing your favorite no-longer-available lipstick on your nicest shirt. Life is full of love. And life is full of the messes resulting from that love.

You cannot love people without cleaning up their shit and their vomit dealing with their messes at some point in our lives.  Especially when they are very young, very old, or very sick (or have four legs).  Life is messy, love is messy, and being chronically ill is messy.  Even if it is not MESSY all the time – my life is MESSY from even the beauty I create.  All my ventures have blowback.

I do my best. I live my best life.

I also get overwhelmed, feel awkward, get upset, and get nervous.  When these things happen I act like a nutcase weirdo.  You’d better believe I hightail it out of THOSE PLACES and PRETEND life didn’t get messy (but it did!)  I have a physical therapist I will NEVER go back to because I was a SUPER FREAK the other day.  Hello—try again next time.  I get emotionally high strung and instead of being chatty sassy Melissa who puts everyone at ease, I turn into f-bombbarilla who gets asked to leave the joint if she can’t contain her expletives.  I turn fives years old in the self-control department because I’m a NERVOUS WEIRDO!  LIFE IS MESSY WHEN YOU’RE NERVOUS and afraid of judgment and scared.

And then later – telling YOU I get to laugh about it- but only after I cry about it.  And only after I lick my wounds and think – why on earth do I have to be a fucking freak?

Meanwhile – my behavior is the equivalent of a MESS. A mess because I’m nervous. I’m shy about my body being the way it is – my size, my weight, my deteriorating joints and muscle atrophy.  I hate it. I feel judged from a thousand directions. My body is a mess right now the way LIFE IS A MESS.  And so I REACT.  And then – I realize – it is a beautiful mess! I splashed into that pool on SUPER SPLASH MODE! Kersplash! GO BIG OR GO HOME! Indeedly!

(I have PT with a NEW physical therapist tomorrow and I promise to be on my best behavior and not be a weird freak. I’m over it. I’ll behave. I need this.)

Sometimes our best life is so totally ridiculously pitifully not what we want it feels like a mess just from being NOT WHAT WE WANT.

We burn bridges.  We end relationships.  People end relationships with us.  Our bodies break.  Our hearts break.  Life breaks.  The messes are endless. ENDLESS MESSES!! Endless beautiful messes we get to walk through and decide if we even want to clean up or if today we’re just going to sit in the puddles and cry.  Or perhaps we’ll lie in them in defiance and make them WORSE FOR A DAY!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.  But I realize now that a beautiful clusterfuckery is not a bad thing. Instead of worrying that the sky is falling – sometimes even I must sit back and be in awe of my own perfect talent.  That woman is going to talk for WEEKS AND WEEKS about what a weirdo I am.  And you know what – I WAS A PERFECT WIERDO.  And she was a rude cunt.  It was a match made in heaven! It was a beautiful messy match.  It is over now.  And I can laugh.  No harm – no foul!  Life is messy.  I will revel in my messy artistry.  Being sick, I am my own special mess maker!

Sickness will stomp a mess on everything – from plans, dreams, desires, your sex life, romance, diet, health, school, career, finances, body image, even your fucking wardrobe turns into a mess.  Sickness wears shit kicking boots when it comes to messes! Sickness is a beautiful balls out mess maker.

Life is messy. Chronic illness is messy. I sit in awe of the beauty – the complete and utter magic mess made daily by being sick.  As we live out loud we make even more messes, in ink! As we living out loud combined with sickness there is a color burst of every known quantity splattering all over our pages as we write our stories. What a beautiful mess!

Are you making messes? Are you living out loud in ink? Is sickness making a mess with you? Is it a mad chaos? Do you even bother to clean as you go or are you leaving it for another day? How do you handle it? Do messes still frighten you? I want to know! Tell me!

See you same place next week! Kisses!

Tags: Chronic Snarkopolist a Big Beautiful Mess Written by Melissa Travis, leaning on friends and family for support when chronically ill, learning to find healing, learning to live out loud despite chronic illness, living out loud, living with chronic autoimmune conditions, Managing Multiple Cancers

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