Afraid of the Dark

When reading my blog title, if you immediately thought of the old Nickelodian show Are You Afraid of the Dark, ten extra points to you.  Unfortunately you lose those ten extra points because this is no way,shape or form, connected to Nic's awesomely perhaps-too-scary-for-a-gullible-7-year-old show. . . bummer right?

One of the bloggers I follow recently wrote a post that I cannot stop thinking about. I often find when Cindy writes that I like to read and reread what she's written because she so beautifully takes a world full of chaos and managed to break it down into it's simplicities at their finest.

She mentions she's a planner, and I think have CF makes all of us planner to some degree. Unfortunately  we just can't up and go on some exciting spontaneous trip. We need to carefully calculate how long we'll be gone, how long we'll be traveling without a fridge, counting pills, trying to plan any unforeseen hiccups just incase we need extra dosages of anything. . . we're natural planners. We plan when to squeeze in treatments and how to spend our few spoons of energy when we're sick. Planning the most appropriate times to head in for a 'clean-out' or tune-up. Like it or not, we plan the heck out of any situation. A lot of the time, our health and lives depend on it.

While Cindy has declared that she's finding peace with letting the future stay dark, I am - have always been- afraid of the dark. Give me light of any source and I will run and cower under it, lest those shadow monsters try to nibble my toes! I'm not sure what it is about not knowing that makes that sea of anxiety creep up, flooding my body until it finds it's escape through my eyeballs. Darn those leaky tear ducts  can't even hold my anxiety ocean back.  While my loving husband has thrown me life-vest after life-vest there are sometimes that even with the life-vest I can't help shake that panic of "Help, me! I'm drowning."

I read so many positive CF bloggers out there and then I sit down to write and all that comes flowing from my fingers is negativity. Anxiety. Suddenly, I'm a too gullible seven year old clutching to my flashlight under my covers because yes, turns out, I am afraid of the dark.  It's something I've struggled with my entire life, and I think I will continue to struggle with my entire life more. Oddly enough, I'm okay with that. We all struggle at times, some more than others. Just like the universe, my natural state happens to be chaos.

While I may feel overwhelmed with options or directions my life could go in, I also feel grateful, humbled and incredibly small. To be experiencing such infinity can be paralyzing. And while I'm still grasping to my flashlight I take comfort in knowing that should my flashlight ever dim, falter or even die; even in the darkest of nights my eyes would eventually adjust and I would be able to find my way (hopefully to a light switch!)  Would it be scary? At first, of course! But given time, I may not need a flashlight after all.