Vacation

I think this vacaton is exactly what I needed. When I came back to work after my LOA I thought I should be at 100%. After all I had just had 7 weeks off. But I was really only fooling myself. Sure, things were a lot better. I am much more relaxed at work now. But my LOA wasn't exactly a vacation. Throughout my time off there were a great deal of mixed emotions. It's not like it was my choice. At first it was one thing.. I thought it was only going to be a few days off and then life would go back to normal. Then it really started to unravel... I was ambushed at the doctor's office. They sent me to a doctor that doesn't even believe Fibromyalgia is real so my reality was marginalized, something I thought I had finally gotten away from. It took 17 years to get the diagnosis and now I had a doctor telling me, once again, tht it's all in my head. He thought it was depression and every behaviour just reinforced that opinion. On any given day I meet some of the symptoms for depression since I do suffer from insomnia and have for almost a decade. The fatigue stems from the insomnia, the Fibromyalgia, and just from stress. Fatigue can also be responsible for some of the other symptoms... like difficulty processing information and not being as involved in activities. What the doctor attributed to a loss of interest in life activities wasn't entirely accurate. It's not that the interest wasn't there... it was that I didn't have the energy to follow through. Depression also involves a change from previous functioning... Fatigue was about the only real change and it impacted a number of other areas. But because of the mention of self-injury the doctor believed that I must be depressed and it was a cry for help. So the underlying issues weren't going to be treated. I was sent for a crisis evaluation at the hospital and the doctor outright said he wanted me on strong anti-depressants before he would allow me to return to work. Now we can add blackmail to the list of things that went wrong with the LOA. It was supposed to be time to relieve that stress and have a mini vacation but it was anything but. When I went back to work I was more relaxed... but I had also been sleeping in while I was off so I wasn't quite as fatigued. I was also moved to another team which helped tremendously. It allowed me to be much more relaxed. I was away from Chris... and from Steve... hidden in my little corner. Plus Christie and I have been friends for 3 years now.

So that was the LOA... the "stress break" that wasn't. I wasn't expecting much of the vacation. But since I got rid of the unwanted guest... it has really allowed me to just be. I don't have to talk to anyone and can just relax. During my LOA Steve was around which didn't help. Now there is no one... just me. Well me and Azrael but he's pretty quiet... except at 2:00 in the morning when he has his bear. I really needed this time to unwind and while I don't expect the fatigue to just magically disappear (would be nice if it did) I can filter out all the noise and just rest. And since it's just me that also means that I don't have to listen to certain people, faking their concern, while really just manipulating me. I call this week my stress free diet.