Don’t Judge a Gift by Its Wrapping

I love Christmas.  It is my favorite time of the year: family, friends, gifts, magic…the snow, the tree, the lights…

What isn’t fun for me, though, is wrapping gifts.  In fact, it is so not fun that my gift wrapping skills are legendary.  Mind you, my gifts look fine, but I was born without the Gift Wrapper gene because my gifts are never wrapped perfectly.  There’s always some bumps and the seams aren’t perfectly straight and sometimes my bows are lopsided.  Sometimes, I use handmade tags (from the wrapping paper) and apparently that’s not done.  Oops.  Anyway, my mom and I were discussing what else? but gift wrapping and how awful mine is.  She and my sister have double the Gift Wrapper gene because their gifts are always wrapped perfectly.  There are no ragged seams; the bows are perfect; there are no bumps.  They’re gorgeous.  Works of art.  See, they are into the whole “presentation” thing and it shows.  And that’s really cool…if you’re them.

But if you’re me, you just wind up feeling like crap.

It’s that way with fibromyalgia, too.  It’s an “invisible” disease because you look totally normal, but something’s wrong inside.  There’s a bump somewhere and a ragged seam.  You appear okay to the world until further investigation…then, poof! not so perfect.

I’ve lived like this for going on 8 years now.  Living with people telling me that it’s all in my head.  Living with people expecting me to be able to do all the things normal people can do.  With no trouble, with no complaint, with a smile on my face.  People who don’t understand that I get tired very quickly.  It’s tough to explain that there’s this something inside me that’s not quite right and it makes me different.

There is no cure for fibromyalgia, nor has a cause been found..yet.  There are a lot of going theories, from it being a sleep disorder to overactive nerves.  There’s medication, but it helps the symptoms, not the underlying problem.  And that’s the way it has to be for now.

Not exactly perfect by any means.

This is why I wrote my chapbook, Life as a Moving Target: to educate and make people understand what having fibromyalgia is all about.  To see that it is real, that it’s not something I made up to get attention.  I also talk a lot about intractable vertigo, one of the many things that comes with fibromyalgia, and how it has affected my life.  Again — appearances can be tricky.  Unless you see me actively lose my balance or grope the walls, you wouldn’t have a clue that anything is wrong.  Well, at one point it was so difficult that I had to stop driving.  And people always couldn’t believe that.  “You don’t drive?  What’s wrong with you?”

Yeah.  A lot of these conversations left me feeling pretty depressed.

I don’t flaunt it, but I will be honest if someone asks me a question.  And that’s the same way I wrote the chapbook: informational — here’s what you need to know.  Obviously, it’s poetry, so it is a bit dramatic, but I assure you, everything I’ve described in those poems happened to me.

I wrote Life as a Moving Target over the course of the past 7 years, from before I was diagnosed and was searching for answers, to now, living and managing the illness.  I’ve learned a lot over the years, but I’ll never forget how it felt to not know what was going on, to know that something was wrong, but no one knew or understood.  And from all appearances, I looked healthy.

Now, I try to live the best life I can live.  Because life itself is a gift: there are so many people who aren’t with us anymore who we wish were.  Sure, it’s not easy sometimes, but it’s okay.  I’m alive. Imperfect?  Sure.  But being here, experiencing the world and making my mark on it trumps the imperfection every single time.  And ten years from now, I’d probably tell you the same exact thing.

So, just like my stellar (yeah, right) gift wrapping skills, don’t judge a person (or a book) by appearances alone.  I think that’s one of the most important things when dealing with fibromyalgia, or any physical or mental condition.  There’s always more to be seen if you’d only but look.

As for my chapbook, it’s written pretty plainly and I don’t rhyme (this is a good thing, as I abhor rhyme).  But I do tell you how it is.  And what it’s like.  And maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand better.

Hope you enjoy my chapbook, and the two other books offered here.  They all have something special in them.  Give us a chance.  Maybe we’ll make your day.

Got to get back to the wrapping.  Christmas is coming!

Merry Christmas to all of you from Turtleduck Press.  We hope you have a safe, magical holiday season.

3 Comments:

  1. I’m with you on the lack of the Gift Wrapper gene. This year I tried to wrap a set of four little bottles, nicely irregular in shape. I finally tore off the paper and used a gift bag instead. There’s more than one reason I like to give books! 😉

    Oh wait, you weren’t talking about literal gift wrapping but invisible disabilities? Yeah, those can be beyond frustrating. I think one of the best things to do is to keep talking about them, letting others know that such things affect the lives of people they know and interact with on a regular basis. It’s easy to dismiss fibromyalgia if you don’t know anybody who has it, or you know somebody but don’t realize how it really affects their ability to function.

    As with so much else in life, communication is central to understanding. That’s one reason why we write, after all.

    Siri

  2. See, I’d have started at the bag. :-*

    I do think it’s good to have this out there. I’d imagine most people don’t think about how hard it would be to, say, walk across a room if it was whirling around them. It’s the poetry I enjoyed, though–and I don’t generally enjoy poetry.

  3. Siri – You are so right there. 😀

    KD – Thank you! I appreicate your support.

    Cheers,
    Erin

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