This has been one of the hardest times for me, between the lupus flare, and now thyroid levels being low I'm having a hard time. I'm sleeping a lot, like last night I fell asleep at 830pm and woke at 10 to go to bed, just to sleep until 730am. Did I mention the 2-3 hour nap yesterday? Today I've struggled to stay awake all day and get some housework done, but I feel like crashing now.

But now that I know what's been wrong this past month, I'm looking forward to feeling better, more like myself.

My psychiatrist added a new med to morning, and cut a night time one in half. She's concerned about the darkness that I sometimes end up in, and to be honest I am too. It's making me feel like I'm back in high school wearing long sleeves all the time, writing poems in my notebook while everyone around me just thinks I'm weird. And I was strange back then. Where everyone else was happy and going on with a "normal" life, I was hiding in my bedroom, or under the covers. I spent hours crying, hurting myself, running off and being promiscuous, and sometimes I even scared myself. When I was a teenager the darkness would get so bad that I really did want to die. I wanted to leave this world and all the heartache behind. I was tired of being the fat, strange outcast who felt more and more alone each day. I attempted suicide, just once, I took a bottle of Tylenol, caffeine pills and God knows what else. I had to drink the nasty charcoal in the ER, and that sucked. I told myself that my next attempt would be something different.

But I never did try again, and now suicide isn't even an option. I didn't fight for 8 months to beat cancer to give it all up now. But the darkness gets real bad sometimes and it scares me because it's as bad at teenage me.  The darkness just kind of creeps in and digs its claws in and takes hold, making me feel the things I hate feeling, think the thoughts I hate thinking, and it makes me cry so hard. The darkness is ugly and it's not a place I like being. I wish I could find the happy middle most people feel.

I have my daughter and husband now, and it's for them that I keep fighting, fighting everything. The lupus, the pain, the darkness, and all the exhaustion and every other illness I've got; I fight it all so that I can be here, be with them, watch her grow. I fight every day and everyday I get a little stronger, even if life keeps trying to knock me down.