It was bittersweet.
And the ending wasn’t right.
Or I guess… the ending was perfect. I had just been hoping for a little more happily-ever-after.
The ending was more true to life than that I suppose.
As long as you keep in mind that we’re talking about a completely fictional far far into the future life that is.
Either way, the games are over.
I’m talking about The Hunger Games of course. Which I finished last night after work. When I still had over 150 pages left to read.
It’s possible I came home, crawled into bed, and abandoned all else until I could say I knew how the story ended.
It was really the only solution. Those books were taking over my life. I needed to be done with them once and for all.
What I didn’t expect were the tears I shed through the last few chapters. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried like that from a book. Plenty of movies have brought me down in a similar fashion, but I really can’t recall a book that brought on the waterworks like this did.
Which I think was two-fold. Firstly, because the ending itself was just so incredibly bittersweet. And secondly, because I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been completely and totally overwhelmed the last few days. Trying to wrap my head around everything that’s happened and what it means for the future. What this new autoimmune angle could mean for the rest of my life. For this battle against endo that every single person I have now spoken to (including the healer and holistic chiropractor) has told me won’t be easy.
For my overall health.
For everything.
I am overwhelmed. And the more and more research I do, the more I feel like I’m drowning. All along, I have said that I felt like there was something we were missing. A piece of the puzzle that everyone was either ignoring or failing to see. And this… this could be it. It could explain why I haven’t been the least bit responsive to the typical endo treatments. Why the endo diet, and Lupron, and the pill, and even this surgery haven’t done a thing to curb the aggressiveness. When I know for a fact that each of those things has worked at one time or another for other endo patients.
It's all starting to slip into place. Which you would think would make me happy, but in reality – it just has me more scared. Because if we're talking about an underlying autoimmune disease that’s feeding the endometriosis, I’m not sure that I can ever hope to return to the healthy girl I was just a few years ago. And maybe it was naïve of me to ever be hoping for that. Naïve and inane and unrealistic. But the truth is – I was. All along, I’ve been hoping (begging/pleading/praying) for an answer that would wipe the last few years clean and allow me to start over.
And now, I’m not so sure that answer exists.
I feel like I’ve spent the last 3 years running around on a hamster wheel. And now, here I am. Lost, confused, and unsure of where to turn next. Sure only of the fact that I am once again learning a lesson in how little control I really have. Wondering whole heartedly when it will be that I can stop learning this lesson entirely.
Because all I want right now, more than anything, is just a little bit of control.
And maybe that’s why the end of The Hunger Games left me a sloppy mess in my bed last night. Because for the last few days, I’ve been able to distract myself and my brain. I’ve been able to turn away from my own battle and focus on the far more treacherous one that Katniss was fighting. I’ve been able to throw myself into her love triangle and root for who I thought the victor would be. (Coincidentally – I was rooting for the wrong guy the entire time, and it wasn’t until the very last pages when I finally realized exactly why he was the wrong guy). The Hunger Games pulled me in and made me feel like I was a part of that world. And while that world is nowhere I would ever actually want to be, it did pull me away from my own world when I needed the distraction the most.
So, I cried. Because the story had ended. And because it didn’t end as blissfully as I so desperately wanted it to. Which was just a painful reminder that sometimes, life doesn’t turn out to be all sunshine and roses in the end. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get. Accept the good with the bad. And realize that the end is going to be a little bittersweet.
The games are over.
And all I know right now, is that I’m overwhelmed.
Feeling raw, and frustrated, and consumed.
As if I’ve come out of an arena of my own, only to get tossed right back in when I least expected it.
Yesterday, the tears fell.
Today, I mulled over the details of the story.
Both hers, and mine.
And tomorrow, it’s time to move on.
To pick up the pieces and formulate another plan of attack.
To focus on reality, and my own story. Which has not yet ended.
Because sometimes, that’s all you can do.
The story doesn't always end with sunshine and roses.
Not in fiction, and not in real life.
But there’s part of me still hoping for another chapter.
As naïve, and inane, and unrealistic as that might be.
There's part of me still hoping for the happily ever after.
ADSPACE
