Turning over a new paving slab.

Alot of people say that turning over a new leaf is hard, and I whole heartedly agree, it can be difficult to start again in an attempt to be the person you want to be. But I think it can be even harder when you suffer from a chronic illness, in my eyes it becomes less like a leaf and more like a paving slab. One of those big ol' concrete ones the council put in on back streets that are never quite level. Have you ever tried to lift one? They are heavy and awkward and the edges are sharp...plainly speaking it is not easy.

And that's exactly how it feels to start fresh when theres a huge chunk of you that you cant leave behind, no matter how positively you think its just not possible to shake off your old life you can't leave your illness in the past, it will be there silently telling you that you are not good enough, that you can't really do this can you? Who are you kidding, you know that you wont make it.

But here is something to remember...

It will be hard, you'll want to give up several times and it would be so easy to just slip backwards but it is possible, you can start afresh with your chronic illness in tow. After all, aren't the best things worth fighting for?

Sometimes when you live with chronic pain a new start is exactly what the doctor ordered, a chance to leave all the 'could have' and 'would have's' behind. When you're first diagnosed witha chronic illness it can feel like your whole life has been stolen from you, all of your dreams have gone in a 'poof' and that can be very difficult to shake, you can sit there for months on end feeling sorry for yourself and how you have nothing left but eventually that wears thin and you start to imagine all the things you could do now instead of eveything you can't do anymore. So turning over that paving slab can be a god send, you now have the opportunity to start that course in mechanics you wanted to do as a teenager or write that novel you never had time for because now you can look at your life in a different way, you have to look for the positives.

You need to pick up that shovel and just start digging away until you can lift that slab up and flip it over, it may take time and it may not turn out like you we're hoping but guess what? You can always turn it over again.