Sometimes people can really surprise you. Today definetely turned into one of those days. There's a lot of people helping Chris and I squeak by right now. Especially my Mom. My health insurance alone costs more than our rent a month. When so much focus goes into simply affording survival, there isn't room left for certain indulgences. Especially not without the guilt of what other thing could be being handled instead.
I wrote a post yesterday about our visit to Sheetz, and some of the emotions it invoked. I worked there for over six years, my life was vastly different. Including being much more financially secure. I talked about my grief related to mourning that life that's now gone. I also mentioned being sad that I couldn't get a frozen yogurt.
I'm dealing with neuralgia on my right thigh currently (a totally new symptom) which is pretty painful, along with worsening of other MS symptoms. In an attempt to get me some relief and due to concern I may have new lesions forming my PCP upped my Prednisone dose. Yes, that drug I was trying so hard to totally get off of. And also that drug that makes me ravenously hungry.
Once upon a time, I used to have a really nice car. While you wouldn't know it now anymore; I love cars. I love modifying and making cars look pretty. +Kyle Hafer and I used to tinker with my car all the time. It was our thing, and my main hobby. It was where a great deal of my extra money got dumped. Kyle was bigger on performance alterations; I was bigger on aesthetics. My car got totalled in the accident that broke my hip, and thanks to not working I had to settle for an average car. While there's nothing wrong with that, it was a tiny piece of that death. It took me out of the car scene.
I had a lot of friends related to that hobby. Cars were what we bonded over. Some of them I worked with at Sheetz as well. Without a car to tinker with anymore, a job, or even the ability to drive they faded from my life much like my hobby. People and activities that were once so much a part of who I was, pretty much gone.
Today I woke up to a message from one of those friends, Kristen. I always looked up to her as a girl in the car scene. She knows far more than I could have ever hoped to about modifications, and was much more independent as a result doing mods on her own. We used to hang out a lot. I worked with her as well. Other than occasionally bumping into her in Sheetz we never talk anymore. I lost what had originally bonded our friendship.
She said she read my blog from yesterday, and wanted me to stop in at Sheetz tonight. She wanted to buy me a frozen yogurt. While to her, this was probably a ridiculously small gesture, to me she may have well of just handed me the keys to a new car. It was so exciting of a message from so many angles. The realization that someone I thought I had become irrelevant too actually reads my blog. Actually still cares enough to reach out. Actually wants to buy me a freaking frozen yogurt.
Sometimes it's hard to let people help you, and accept charity and generosity. The polite thing always seemed to be to say no. That the offers were made from a place of guilt or pity, and that a rejection of such offer was a release of that person's assumed obligation. I've learned with time though that people that offer genuinely want to help, and that rejecting such offers is silly, and actually hurtful.
So now I'm sitting here looking forward to tonight. I have a plan! A plan to meet a friend that was a big part of that life I still grieve.
A plan I don't have to worry about scraping funds together for, or whether or not I'll be feeling well enough for. A plan that involves so many indulgences that I'm not often privy to anymore; socialization, icecream, something from my past. It's unreal just how exciting this is for me. And I'm sure she has no idea (until she reads this) just how huge her small gesture really is.
Maybe there's some things I'm grieving that are still alive. Maybe I'm pulling the plug on a life that simply needs some assistance.
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