Your Everyday Girl

It’s one of those days, guys. I want to write something profound, but I can’t. I want to draw my words onto paper, but I’m running out of paint. I don’t even have paint, so I don’t even know why I said that—it just sounded cool.

I’m rambling, but maybe this update will give us both some insight. I hope…

I visited my doctor last week, and we’ve been running treatment ideas back and forth about my Cervical Dystonia (CD). I am in this phase of trial and error with my body, and I don’t even know if I have the right to do that since I don’t have a medical degree, but I do know my body best. At least I think I do. My CD might disagree and say that it owns me more than I own it.

If you’re new here, please feel free to read up about my Cervical Dystonia. No pressure though because I don’t want to get you down on a Monday morning.

My hope is quite dry these days, as dry as my skin. I want to confirm that I drink water, but I’ve been a bit behind on that. I might replace water with iced coffee which I KNOW is not the same, but at least there is a bit of water in it? I say this with a half smile.

I’ve been committed to the half-smile lately. If you are Canadian then you know what it is, if you are not Canadian then here’s my attempt at describing it:

The half smile is the smile we share when crossing paths, entering elevators, scanning items at the self-checkout and notice ourselves in the camera, and mostly when you don’t know what other facial expression to share with another. Our regular sized lips turn into thin lines spread across our faces with a slight upturn of the cheeks.

The half smile is friendly, but it can also be apologetic and can also be used in scenarios when you are confused.

Do not make the mistake of sharing full smiles because that can make you look crazy. You do NOT want to give yourself away with a full smile. You will lose all integrity and you will scare people. Nobody wants to talk these days so the half smile guarantees this.

Now that we understand how many Canadians operate (or maybe how Vancouverites operate) we can move on.

So, my time with my doctor has been a work in progress. I go in and give her an update on my neck movement and we try to address muscles and nerves that are tight which need to loosen up and other muscles that are a bit too loose that need to tighten up. It’s a loosey goosey game we’re playing, but in the name of science and research I’ll commit.

Nobody in our circles, both mine and my doctor’s, has encountered another person with CD in my age range, so understanding the cause of this problem is quite difficult. I would say for the most part that we are making calculated guesses, yet we’re always back to square one. I did tell her during my last appointment that, “I lose hope sometimes” because I am starting to think that curing this is probably impossible.

That got me thinking…what inspires hope?

Is hope something we make up so that we can pass on the days with ease? Is hope something we need in order to survive? Is hope some wishful thinking we grant ourselves when we have exhausted all other options?

I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out.

Even if I am slightly hopeless, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. It wouldn’t be me if I did. Maybe I’ll find hope along the way again.

Your everyday girl,

Sara