CoCo Scum

As a child, mom and I used to have this fun thing she would say to me every time I asked "What's up mom?" She would always smile and say CoCo scum, which is saying that life is like the scum at the bottom of the Hot chocolate cup. Not great, but livable. I always loved when she said that. Mom is always the realist in the family; I mean someone has to be the responsible one! Well living life as a 32 year-old with both IBS and Fibromyalgia, pretty much most days I would call CoCo scum days. Lined with shit, literally. So today I am home sick, with a cold, sniffles, sitting on my brown couch (which looks kinda like the color of CoCo scum) still in my blue pajamas, remote in one hand, tissue in the other. See, when a normally healthy person gets a cold, it's just that, a cold. It only lasts a few days and you get your energy back and things go back to normal. Well not for people with Fibromyalgia. It's like we have all these catalysts that live in us and when we get sick, one thing causes another thing, like dominos falling down. A cold for us can easily last seven days and your limited energy level has turned into a snail's pace crawl. It's pathetic and depressing. I find myself looking out the window, watching people run with their I-Pod's sweating, and I remember the time I was an Aerobics instructor at the YMCA with tight abs, and energy for days. I danced in school and after school and taught gymnastics and Aerobics when I was young and now I stand at the bottom of the stairs and dread having to walk up them because I know when I get to the top, I'll be tired. And then I think, that is so not fair. I want my life back. I want to feel that energy rush that you get after a great workout and the way I felt after dancing a five minute non-stop ballet, I felt alive and now I feel dead! I want to be that energizer bunny! I wonder when CoCo scum will turn into a silver lining. Didn't mean to drag you down, but we Fibro-women are not alone and we can ban together. We can take the low rode- the quiet walk around the lake, take things slow and steady. Smell the flowers, not run past them. So I am putting the CoCo-rimmed cup in the dishwasher and doing my best to enjoy life as the turtle, and accepting that I am no longer the bunny, because we all remember the saying that slow and steady always wins the race, sniffles and all.