Regular Doses of Grief

This isn't a super cheery post for me, but I think it's something that needs to be written. As with a lot of my posts on chronic illness, I share this not just for myself (though it can be cathartic, it's sometimes just downright scary), but for others who might be going through something similar and think they are alone in it.

Today's topic is: Grief. 

I'm not actually talking about the grief that comes from losing someone, either to death or just distance/end of a relationship. I'm talking about the grief of losing the life that you cannot live because of your chronic illness/es, chronic pain, or other condition that changes the way you want your life to go.

Now, just quickly, a little proviso - I am really happy with my life and where I am. A lot of the time I feel content, and sometimes I feel excited about the little things that I have set up for myself in my life. I have done my best to work around my illnesses and sometimes worth with them so that I am living a life that still has some meaning, even when I can't do a lot of things I would like to.

That being said, I do find that about every six weeks to two months or so, I feel really sad, and sometimes really angry. I think I have written about this before, but not in the context of it being grief - I didn't know at the time that that was what I was going through. I just felt so angry and often that anger would then turn into tears and I would have to cry myself out until I was exhausted. Often then I would have a certain amount of time where I just felt low and ridiculously un-cheerful, until I felt capable of pulling myself back up and just enjoying life again. I didn't know where it was coming from, and it's only been in the past couple of years that I've realised: I'm grieving. I've started linking things together, and these 'doses of grief' often turn up after I am feeling a little frustrated with how little I feel that I can do, or I am sad that I have to acknowledge to myself yet again that I can't work or study or, sometimes, even read or write.

I've been feeling a little low and frustrated lately, and just realising over and over that I can't do some things that I really want to be able to do. I am feeling a bit stuck, and it doesn't help that this has been a bad pain week. I posted on Wednesday about self-care and how it helps, but at the time I honestly thought I was just feeling low because of my pain levels, not that this was one of my 'doses of grief', and those aren't so easy to snap out of. I'm sure some part of me just wishes that I could 'get over it' and move forward without this grief coming up so regularly, but the fact of the matter is that I need to have this. I need to be able to grieve sometimes for a life that I wanted to live, even whilst still being so grateful for the life that I have. I think past-me really couldn't believe that I could hold those two things at the same time, and so the length of my grief 'dose' would spiral out for much longer in the past because I was beating myself up for 'not appreciating the life I have'. I do, and I'm also still sad that I can't do some things that I had planned for myself, like: live in another country; have an 'actual' job so I could earn money; have more pets (Peppermint is probably an 'only cat household' kind of cat, but I can't help feeling like if I had more energy I would be able to introduce her to other friends and she would be happier (yeh, I've stopped beating myself up about this, but sometimes I still think about it); be more active on social media and get back to making videos, and make them even better; write a lot more!; be a better friend; get back to swimming, which I always loved and still do; study more! particularly languages....

The list goes on, but that's some of the things. Sometimes I beat myself up during these periods of grief for not getting more done and being more diligent about my writing or book reviewing for example, but I just try to remind myself that I am doing the best I can. I am doing the best I can. And that looks different to other people's 'best', even other spoonies' 'best'. And that's okay. Sometimes I even believe myself! ^^;

Anyway, I think these periods of grief will probably come up for me for the rest of my life (as I do believe that I will be sick for the rest of my life). Sometimes I will deal with them better than others. At the moment, this one is a little harder because of other difficulties in my life, and not feeling like I can talk to others about things that much. And that's okay. It just is what it is. I'll navigate as best I can, and maybe have a few crying sessions until I feel a little more able to take on the world again.

I hope that, if you have period of grief like this, you know that you're not alone. This sucks. I'm sorry. Let yourself grieve. And then, hopefully, come out the other side of your 'dose of grief' and find something to make yourself smile again, even if it's just a little cat meme.

Love to all who read.

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Thoughts on Self-Care

My pain levels have been kind of high lately. Sometimes, when this happens, I have complete meltdowns after a few days. It's really hard to deal with high levels of pain day in and day out, and my resilience seems to seep away rather quickly. But this week, even though I am feeling pretty anxious and a little low at the moment due to a pile up of symptoms, I'm not melting down. And I think I might know why.

Basically, someone who is very dear to me suggested a couple of weeks ago that I have a regular time to nap every day. Even if I can't sleep, it would be good for me to try and lie down for an hour or two and just keep that going for myself. Sleep really does help with healing, and my body is constantly trying to heal itself, or at least feel a little better than it does, and so sleep is super helpful in that way. I decided to take my friend's advice and I've been having a regular nap time ever since (with a couple of days where I forgot/just didn't do it mixed in there, but not many), and I think it's been helping a lot.

But I want to talk about today - I decided early on that today would be a rest day, so I worked hard to just keep things quiet and gentle for myself all day. I didn't do too many chores, I made many cups of herbal tea (and drank them), and I mostly focused on reading. It was so...soothing. Whenever I have one of these days I remind myself that I need to do it a little more often, because they just help me feel more like myself.

Towards the end of the day, however, I started doing a little too much. I made dinner, took a bath, did a face mask, did some cleaning... and now I feel that anxiety and sadness creeping in. But I think, because I at least took most of the day to rest, I'm not experiencing a huge meltdown. It's just a little episode of feeling off and a bit rough. Without the self-care I've practiced today, it could have been a whole lot worse.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this poorly planned post is that self-care is not always necessary after you melt down. It can be a great preventative and can help you build your resilience. And also, naps are great.

Love to all who read.

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To Fear.

I was thinking about compassion this morning, and loving-kindness, both valuable things to be thinking about and important parts of Buddhism and Buddhist thought, and my mind turned inward for a while. I began thinking of my illnesses and my pain. And my fear.

To be clear, the fear that I mean at the moment is not the one that arises in relation to financial woes, or housing difficulties. The fear that I am thinking of is the one that rises within me whenever pain and discomfort reach a certain level, or have been constant for some time. This fear also arrives pretty promptly when certain kinds of pain arrive - particularly to do with stomach/gut pain and the pain associated with urinary tract infections and interstitial cystitis.

This fear sweeps in like a wave, and it's hard to see it coming sometimes. It's just suddenly there. It says things like 'how long is this going to last?', 'is this something new?', 'is my body doing serious damage to itself?', 'what if I need to go to the hospital this time! what if I need more tests?'. And then, quietly, shatteringly, 'what if I'm dying?'.

Death isn't something that is new to me. Part of dabbling ('studying occasionally' may be the better term) in Buddhism means that I am no stranger to meditating on death - my own, and others'. With all my health issues and some operations under my belt, too, I have thought about my own death before. Not in a way that could be construed as suicidal ideation, though I have been there and know how to recognise when that is happening, but in a way of acknowledging that death is a part of life. But what I want to talk about is the fear that arises with these thoughts, when I am in pain or feel as if I am going to pass out.

I know that this pain is actually just trying to protect me. It's that 'fight-or-flight' response. And the fact that, whilst I've been diagnosed with a few different things, doctors still don't really know what is wrong with me and why I have such bad turns with my stomach and digestive system - no doctor has ever witnessed one of them, either, and even after all these years of having these 'bad turns', I still find it hard to pinpoint where the pain is coming from. I'm usually just trying to avoid passing out and reminding myself to breathe. The fear flows strongly during these times, and I know that if I get swept away by a wave - as I often did when I was younger and didn't have the strength of mind to withstand it - the pain will feel so much worse, I will feel terrified, and I will panic. Panicking just doesn't help in these episodes, unfortunately - I should know, as I've tried it. 

So, this morning I just want to send a little loving-kindness and compassion to my fear. It's trying to protect me - trying to get me to run away from the pain and discomfort, trying to get me to find someone who could take away the pain (not sure such a person exists, but I guess anything is possible), trying to remind me that even I don't know what is going on in my own body. All of this is a (misguided) attempt to help me during what is really a small crisis happening inside of me. I appreciate it. But I'm going to keep working on my breathing, my management of stress, and observing my thoughts, so that I can keep moving forward and not getting tugged down into sheer panic.

I prefer being able to breathe.



Love to all who read.

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Spoonie Musings: Heading to Weddings

Hi all!

For those that follow my instagram, you may know that I was in hospital over the weekend. My husband and I decided that I should try going to Emergency when I had my (may have lost count but I think it was my) sixth ovarian cyst rupture of the year. [Note: they did a blood test, poked around at my belly, and then told me to go get an ultrasound. But everyone was so helpful and it was just really nice to be taken so seriously about it that I didn't mind spending three odd hours there. I had a book.] Ovarian cyst ruptures are truly awful events, and I wouldn't wish them upon anyone. But perhaps more on that in a different post.

Anyway, yesterday, two days after I was in hospital, I headed to my cousin's wedding. And it was so beautiful (my cousin was radiant, her new husband dashing, and they made me laugh and cry a little with their vows and speeches). I am so grateful to have been invited to the event, and to have had enough spoons (please google 'the spoon theory' if you have no idea what I am talking about) to stay for the whole shindig.

But it took its toll. Even just when we left, I was having some bad symptoms. My interstitial cystitis was flaring a bit, my stomach was unhappy, and of course I was still recovering from having massive pain and nearly passing out two days beforehand. When we got there, I was feeling okay, but perhaps not what other people might call 'okay'. Perhaps, what they would call 'not so great' or 'a bit rough'. Luckily, I managed to grab a chair during the ceremony (helped), and was constantly offered chairs after the ceremony when we were waiting for the dinner (also helped). My husband was super solicitous of me, and even let me lean on him when I was too tired to hold myself up. People tried to lean in closer to me when they spoke so I didn't have to strain to hear them, or strain my voice to speak back. Drinks were bought for me so I wouldn't feel too faint.

And yet, in an ideal world where I am not unwell, this is not how I would really want to spend my time at my cousin's wedding. I would want to be standing and able to move around and chat to people. I would want to feel okay about going for a walk in the beautiful setting of the wedding. I would want to enjoy my lemon, lime, and bitters without having symptoms afterwards of tachycardia and dizziness. I say all of this without any bitterness (aside from my drink?) in my heart about this now being my lot in life (at the moment, anyway), but just with curiosity and more as an observation than a complaint.

Ultimately, weddings are kind of hard for a spoonie.

By the time Xin and I got back him, it was around 10:30pm or so, and we had been gone for eight hours. Even now, the day after that has been filled with stomach pain, exhaustion, and anxiety fallout, I am unsure how I managed it. I think even Xin is a little unsure how I managed it. When Xin and I got married last year, I was pretty sick during our honeymoon. My stomach was hating on me pretty bad, and I was more exhausted than usual for basically the entire three weeks we were away. It was just too much. A few of the spoonie friends I invited pretty much immediately declined - knowing their own limits straight away and realising that going to a wedding would just be too hard. This is where spoonie lifestyle and family obligation kind of meet, and it isn't always pretty.

I am not entirely sure what I wanted to say in this blog post, aside from recording my experience of what has happened recently. I have been on painkillers and such all day today, just so I could avoid being curled up in the foetal position all day, just trying to rest. I don't know if this is what will always happen at weddings, but I am glad and so grateful I got to go to this one.

Love to all who read. 

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Further Investigations in Cystitis

So, cystitis. I have written about this before, here, and have actually since then been officially diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, which I have mentioned in that linked post. Basically it means that my body often mimics the symptoms of cystitis without there actually being any infection present.

I have been put on a pill to try and relax my bladder and such, trying to reduce my symptoms, and it has actually been helping. But over the last week or so, I have been getting the symptoms with increasing frequency, and also with more pain than I have experienced since going on the drug. And that has been pretty tough for me to deal with.

I am trying very hard to dig more into what is bringing the symptoms on, but it hard given that a lot of my conditions tend to just get worse during stressful times, and I don't feel like there is much that I can combat that with that I haven't already (no, being told 'just worry less!' and 'try meditation!' has surprisingly not led to an instant fix!). What I have noticed is that two main emotions often come up around the time that I get the symptoms - anger, and sadness.

Both of them make sense to a certain extent - I am usually really upset that I have the cystitis again and that I am so uncomfortable. I am wondering if it has something to do with not expressing when things are getting too much, or I am feeling overwhelmed and not talking about it - because when cystitis hits I often realise just how much stuff I have been piling onto myself, and how much I have been shirking self-care.

I can't say that I am always capable of investigating when this comes up, or digging into the 'why' of it, but I want to keep trying in the hopes that I might start looking after myself even better than before, and maybe keep the cystitis symptoms from taking over again.

I also hope I will continue to share my thoughts on this most frustrating and embarrassing of conditions... Just in case someone out there might need the reassurance that it isn't just them.

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Prolonged absence and some useful links~

Regular readers may notice that I haven't been super active on my blog for some time. Many of those regular readers will also know why that is - March and April were pretty busy for me! I turned 26 on March 2nd (I am still thinking about having more celebration around this as it was with little fanfare at the time) and then Xin and I got married later in the month :D The end of March and half of April was taken up with our honeymoon to Japan and South Korea!

When we got back there was a lot of time spent trying to organise my brain and life again, and when I finally felt like things were starting to move forward, I encountered a little block. So I turned and tried a different way, and I encountered another block. I tried doing something else - found a block there, too. And then, in the past week, I have gotten more and more exhausted with each passing day. Earlier in the week I figured this was just a little 'symptom tantrum' from having done so much in the past two months.

And then when it didn't get better, I realised that I was not feeling joyful about some things that usually light me up, and that I was putting off a lot of stuff that I would normally just get done. And I realised, just yesterday, that I recognised these things, these feelings, because I had had them before. And they had been going on since I finished my recent degree at the end of last year.

Burnout, how are you doing? It is interesting to see you again.

Yesterday I decided that I needed to employ some serious self-love tactics for a while until I feel more excited and joyful, and more capable of taking things on. And then I began to remember a few things that I often read when I am feeling this way, so I thought I would share them with you in case you need some self-love nudges at the moment. 

[by the way, there is a strong chance I have shared these links before. if so, I am not going to apologise because, honestly, sometimes things are so valuable that you just need to reread them and be reminded!]

Leonie Dawson's exploration of burnout in this post is just fantastic. It makes me sigh with relief and feel like 'hey, I'm not the only person that deals with this!' and reminds me of things I can do to heal myself.

Havi Bell is someone I turn to so regularly for permission to just be me, and she always reminds me with her gentle 'interior decorating' that everyone has their own stuff to work on, and wouldn't it be great if we worked on our own stuff and supported each other instead of throwing "shoes"? (ie. throwing our stuff at other people under the guise of anger or betrayal). This is her most recent post and it really touched me when I read it. Crown On/Do Less - yes.

This post was recently shared with me by a dear friend and, while it addresses chronic illness and the mystery through which it acts, I think it is worth looking at for the gorgeous dog and book pictures alone.

I hope these links connect with you. Love to all who read.

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My timeline is not lining up.

Hi guys,
sorry for the lack of writing lately - it has been a hard month to be honest. I am still feeling quite cheerful, but I had a few times there where things just felt really wrong and I was having trouble keeping my head above water. Today I am dealing with a full-blown cold thing (mostly it's my throat that is hating on me, but that is totally okay because throat lozenges, tea, and medicated mouth wash are things that I can do!), and I just got my new mechanical keyboard (I can do a post on it later if you would like! just leave a comment below) so I thought I would go through some posts that I have started lately and just spruce them up a bit so you can read what has been happening!

Below is a post that I wrote about two weeks or so ago, and it was during a pretty bad time. It is a bit rambley, but those posts seem to still get a lot of interest as I am sharing my experience, so here you go!:

The last week has been a lesson in patience and pain. I started last week managing to do some exercise, and even do a scary thing where I had to go in to a place for a meeting-type-thing that I knew very little about. I started the week feeling strong and capable and did the things and didn't even chew gum during it.

And then the next day I woke up with cystitis, a bad CFS and fibromyalgia flare, and ohmygoodnessholyemotionsbatman. It was hard - and not just on me. It was hard for those around me, because I was sitting there, rocking backwards and forward trying to find a comfortable spot (such things often cease to exist when cystitis is around), and questioning out loud why this was happening. 'I was doing everything right!' I kept repeating. 'I just don't understand why this is happening...' often fell out of my mouth, too.

And the truth was, I had been doing everything right. I'd being drinking lots, drinking my special kidney tea, taking cranberry pills, doing all the right things. I had started doing a little more exercise (just walking mostly) and I was feeling better for it.

The only conclusion we could come to was that I had gotten more stressed about the scary thing than I thought, and my body had reacted. Strongly.

And it took a couple of days before I was able to convince my doctor that I needed antibiotics, so that meant I had about two and a half days of being in pain and discomfort, where I could barely read. I'm on antibiotics now, but everything is still ten times harder than it was before, and I am trying so hard to keep doing the things I need to (particularly study things) while my brain and my heart keep whispering to each other 'more rest would be best' and 'if this thing didn't have to be done, we would rest more'. These whispered conversations are constantly there, and I am having trouble.

The thing is, it is now the pointy end of my current study period, and I am behind on almost all the things. I have had to ask for extensions on many things just so I can try and do them justice, and I am trying not to panic over the things. I want so much to be well enough to do the things at the moment, but I have to admit to myself that I'm just not. My health timeline is not matching up with my study timeline, and I am suffering for it.

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That *other* illness I sometimes get.

PLEASE NOTE: In this blog post I will be talking about a health condition that might make people feel uncomfortable. If you start reading and find yourself getting a bit triggered by this, please stop reading. Go check out one of my posts on books or morning routines, make yourself a cup of tea. As always, self-care is paramount.


My funny little realisation recently that I wanted to use my writing to help people - and particularly help people dealing with health problems - led me to start thinking about how I could do this. And something has happened to me twice (maybe three times) this year (already) that I don't talk to other people about.

It is an infection that I get with some regularity, despite my best attempts to avoid it. Every time I turn up to the doctor with this one, they tell me the same things (which I always follow to the letter), but apologise for not being able to offer more assistance. I had a brief respite from any symptoms of this infection when I was seeing my naturopath - but sometimes even the things she gave me to help don't seem to touch it.

What I'm talking about is an infection called Cystitis - a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI).

I am sure to people that have not experienced any sort of UTI, this small thing might not sound too bad. For some, it actually isn't - people don't often experience all the same symptoms with this one, and can just go to the doctor with some minor back pain or exhaustion and find that a script of antibiotics clears them right up.

I've never been one of those people. I started getting cystitis back in 2009, though I do have some vague memories of getting something like it when I was a kid, and having my mum take care of me and help me get through it. Whenever I get cystitis now (and it is unfortunately quite frequently), it starts with a burning sensation when I go to the bathroom. A burning sensation that gets steadily worse as time goes on, even if I am drinking lots of water, trying to flush out the offending germs.

Then I get pain in my lower abdomen, aching and yet severe. By this point I have usually heated up a heat pack or two - one to sit on, one to go on my tummy - to try and relieve the pain. Sometimes it helps. In some more vicious versions of the infection, it helps only a tiny bit. I often find myself rocking backwards and forwards, trying desperately to remember that I am a happy person. I am in so much pain and discomfort by this point - pain and discomfort that I can't escape - that I am usually very close to tears. I often want to go to the bathroom desperately, but fear the pain of actually going. 

If things have gotten to this point (sometimes I will just have a few symptoms but they go away with some care), I will go to the doctor and do the urine test and all of that stuff (more on that if requested, as I know some people have never had a UTI [this baffles me] and don't know what I mean). Sometimes the test will say I am okay, which is frustrating, but my doctors are ones that understand my case specifically and so we will talk through options. I have to be careful, as I am allergic to some antibiotics for UTIs, so I have to go on a different one to those - and I don't want to take it so much that I become immune to it, you know?

Writing about this is so hard, because it brings up a lot of pain and discomfort just as a topic. Many people I have seen about this problem say that cystitis comes up a lot for women that are unhappy in their relationships, or women that are holding a lot of anger inside. And yes, as one of my recent posts will attest, I do get angry sometimes, but it rarely correlates with when I get sick from a UTI. But I am not unhappy in my relationship, and it is frustrating to me when the same people continue to ask that about me when I just want them to find another reason why I get this so often, rather than just focusing in on the one they know.

If you experience cystitis, or interstitial cystitis (where the symptoms present themselves over and over again, with rarely a break) then I really really feel for you. I am so so sorry. This is one of those things I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (even if I was really really mad), and I know some people that have had to go to hospital when this infection spreads to the kidneys - luckily I have never had that experience as my body is so sensitive I tend to pick up on symptoms straightaway.

I realise that this post is a bit convoluted and doesn't make a lot of sense, but I feel so new to writing about this condition. I am not sure I will do it again, but I want people to know that they aren't alone in their experiences. Cystitis happens to so many people and yet we hardly talk about it. Most people don't know it exists. The only time I have ever seen it in 'the popular sphere' is in Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - she gets a UTI after having much sexy times. (Just to be clear, you don't always get UTIs after sexy times. They can come on for a multitude of reasons, and women with interstitial cystitis can just get it for no reason at all.)

As much as I want to start this conversation, I am still frightened. Frightened of what people might think of me, frightened of the illness itself. I think I have a long way to go to heal myself of this one.

Love to all who read.

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Stories from everyday life.

A photo taken by me during a quiet walk.

I have been struggling this morning with a few different things. It is fair to say that, after a weekend full of migraines and generally feeling sorry for my poor body and everything it's trying to cope with, I tend to put all my hopes into one basket - the basket of 'I will get better and be able to finish all the things that need to be done today'.

In my logical brain, it stands to reason that if I have been unable to do much of anything all weekend, on Monday things shall be bright and new and I will suddenly find myself with boundless energy and the motivation needed to complete all the things I have put off while being sick.

The reality is that I am still so weak, and still so sore and tired from the weekend that I can barely cope with digesting breakfast, let alone picking up where I left off on Friday.

I argued with myself for most of the morning about whether to ask for a one day extension on an assignment. I kept reasoning and reasoning with myself, until I realised this: I was thinking of this extension like it was a resource in short supply. That is, if I were to ask for this extension, I would lose the possibility of having another extension further on down the track. When I 'truly needed it'. And I realised that this story I was telling myself just didn't add up.

Regardless of the fact that I feel slightly better than I did over the weekend, or the fact that I could probably push myself to finish my assignment (though, perhaps, at the cost of my health again), I decided to give myself a little bit of a buffer. A little wiggle room so that I might be able to give myself one of the things I truly need right now - space to recover.

I will continue to look into the stories I am telling myself each day, and see if I can find where these stories are detrimental to my health and wellbeing.

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The difficult things to say.

I think part of the reason that I spend so much time thinking is that I have taught myself to internalise things more than I used to.

I still talk to those I trust a LOT when they're around (honestly, it's like a dam bursting), but it's usually about things like assignments, what I think about current issues in the news, or me trying to process new emotions or symptoms.

I don't really talk about how trapped I feel inside my own body sometimes, or how alone I feel with my symptoms, or how I seem to question myself almost every second day STILL on whether I am being lazy or not.

These are the things that are difficult to say.

There are times when my body feels like the enemy, despite the fact that I work hard at my relationship with it. 'It'. I even refer to my body as a separate entity - sometimes different parts have different personalities. My stomach is particularly sensitive (I used to refer to it as 'scared rabbit'), my back tries to be tough and keep everything together, but often ends up in more pain because of its efforts.

On some days I have so many symptoms - pain throughout my body, a general feeling of heaviness, sore throat, glands swollen to the point of restricting breathing, fuzzy vision, clouded thoughts, and, let's be honest, a general sense of gloom. I am better at cheering myself up despite the physical symptoms, but, for a while, I can feel it.

That sense of being trapped inside a body that doesn't want to do anything other than tend its wounds. That feeling of being trapped, scared, helpless.
Useless.

And then comes the questioning. It stems from the fact that what I have is never defined specifically. Sure, there are labels. Possibilities. There is the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome label that I use to best describe things, but it is not possible to properly diagnose that. It's more of a 'if-it's-none-of-these-other-things-than-maybe-it's-CFS' thing.

There are many questions: is this something I create through anxiety (so I SHOULD control my anxiety better to get healthier)? Am I just being lazy and have convinced myself that I am unwell? Is this all because I ate a piece of bread three days ago?

This is too much for one body (and mind) to deal with. And, when I go down this road, I end up going around in circles. Because there is no right answer here. There is no ultimate resolution for this.

And, while I may sound resigned and depressed in this post, this tends to be a fleeting state these days. I have grown to see the positives with this life I have been given. I have been given the gift of following what I truly want to do, even if it might not be on my own terms sometimes. Even if I have to continue dealing with strange and somewhat unwanted symptoms for the rest of my life, this life has allowed me to realise that I have greater resilience than I ever thought possible.

I have looked all over the place for some sign that someone else lives in the two worlds (that of the healthy and the sick) in the same way I do. But ultimately, no one does. Not in the exact same way and with the same attitude as me. So, I have come to one conclusion, and I will work towards it as much as I can.

I need to inspire myself.

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