I have been told all my life that I am “just like my Dad.”  It has been said not always in the most positive connotation by the way.  I don’t exactly know what that means.

What I do know about my Dad is he is the most calm and level-headed person I think I have ever met.  He is also quiet.  I think he thinks a lot. Not impulsive by any means. Consistent in nature.

As I get older, it has dawned on me that I think, I am “just like my Dad.”

I was talking to my friend, Sarah, saying how I always want to be consistent, calm, and kind.

She laughed out loud and said, “You are the most consistent person I have ever met” among other things.

I don’t always think that I am.  But, if I am, it might be from the learned habitual practice of doing my treatments for so many years – or maybe it is just in my DNA.

The consistency goal for me is the utmost important combined with kindness being the undertone in everything for myself and others – because when the ground feels like it is breaking up underneath me, I need to stand firm, strong, and know that I will be Okay, no matter what.  I have to do this – no one else can do this for me. CF is my main challenge in this lifetime and I must be strong enough to see it through.

To see it through.  That is a tough one.

It is kind of funny because I opened up one of my writing books and the writing prompt is, “When did you pretend not to care?”

Every day I pretend not to care.

I pretend I don’t actually detest my treatments at times.  That is the thick of it in CF.  The treatments.  In all actuality, I hate doing them some days. I don’t have a burning hate.  It doesn’t have that fire, I don’t have the energy for that. It is more like a low rumbling of a train coming.  A latent detest.

And a word from the wise, not me, when all that comes – just let the stuff roll-on out. The train miraculously passes every time, and I have found, nothing actually happens to you if you sit with your stuff.  You know, the stuff that bothers you the most.  It always passes.

Still, it would be lovely to come home and put my feet up and go to bed without doing a task that is the holy grail of tasks, the weight it has.  It isn’t the physical it is the mental task of not skipping it, the dedication to see it through, and just putting my health at the top of my list every day of my life.  My analogy of doing my treatments is it feels like a kid pulling on my pant leg and when I do my treatment, finish the task, the pulling then stops.  It is a bitch.  That is where that willpower muscle comes into play.

I know everyone has the thing that bothers them the most – and it is annoying as hell. This is just mine.

Through the years, I have found ways around when I am extremely tired.  I sometimes take a nap to take the edge off, then do my treatment.  I have seen every hour of the day and night to complete my two treatment a day quota. Sometimes I am going to bed late, sometimes I am getting up extremely early, really the middle of the night to get it done. On this machine, whenever it was tuned up last, it says 778 hours on it. That is a lot.

I have been thinking, that I may have been mediating for countless years, someplace in all those treatment hours, I just never knew it was.  Not in the traditional sense of course, but I have spent a lot of time sitting, allowing all that negative energy pass through me.  I do read as well, not books, since the words jiggle too much and I can’t read the words while I do my treatments. I write.  I stream shows.  I think of ideas and jut them down, but then there is a lot of time I go someplace else mentally,

But it seems to be for the most part when I do feel the pressure, the frustration rise in my bloodstream, I mumble to myself (just like my Dad) and shake my head.  I get my particles together, put the medicine in, strap on my vest one buckle at a time, “click, click, click”, (or hop on my treadmill), put my headphones on, and I am literally transported someplace else.  My stuff will roll right on out, exiting fully just about the time I hear that beep on my machine, telling me we are all through this time around.

I am thankful that they have kept me alive all these years – no doubt.  It is just finding that balance.

The work needs to be done.

It must be done.

There is no option but to see it through.

p.s. I have put-off doing my treatment this entire time while writing this – HA!  It is time – cue the music.