The New Path

I have been absent for a while due to multiple reasons. If anything, these reasons are a door opening to another pathway. If anything, this is a major turn on my life’s journey, no matter how you look at it.

First off, my chronic pain has completely changed my life. At the age of 26, I was working as a paralegal in one of the best employment law firm’s in Michigan. The job was extremely stressful for multiple reasons. I was treated like I was a child because I was young and also looked very young. I guess I was immature too. Only two people would even talk to me, the other youngest members of the firm, we were affectionately referred to as "the Romper Room" Department. It was my first "real"career employment. One I really enjoyed. We were attorneys for the Plaintiffs and we took on enormous and powerful companies. These cases were regarding sexual harassment, racial and age discrimination and disability discrimination. It was wonderful to feel that I was giving my piece of good to the world, it is one of my biggest life goals. Anyway... At the end of 2002, the law firm I worked for decided to move offices. Although I told the office manager I had trouble lifting due to a sport’s injury to my back, just picking up my pencils and paper and putting my desk supplies into boxes caused me to have what I now know as a "flare-up." I had constant muscle pain coming from one spot in my mid-back on the right side with muscle pain and spasms radiating down and around my right side, so tight I couldn’t sit up. The only thing I could do was lay on my back with a heating pad and take pain medication. This is how I spent Christmas that year and my mom had to do my Christmas shopping for me and make all my meals. We were all scared but a trip to the ER told us everything was ok and I would get better. That was the beginning and I have a lot more to say about it, and I will... soon.

The turn in my path has come because at this time, seven years later, due to the facts that I cannot support myself and that I have to depend on others for most of my activities of daily living: cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning, I had to move back in with my parents. I have the special gift of having parents to take care of me. But they live in Tennessee and I was living in Michigan. I had to move from the suburbs of Detroit, where I had spent 25 years of my life, where my best friends lived, where I could go to bars and had a social life once in a while, to a tiny town in Tennessee, dry county, small population, absolutely beautiful place, but I have no idea how to make a life here. I can’t clean my own room, which is what I now live in, mostly laying flat on my bed, writing cover letters, editing my resume and trying desperately to find a job. Although I really don’t know how much I can do, I have still applied for full-time, part-time (which is most likely the most feasible) even contract assignments, and I have heard nothing. Nevertheless, I have chosen to try to make a life here in this amazing place, in the valley of the Smokey Mountains on the Tennessee River...and I intend to tell you guys all about it, chronic pain and all...

Here’s to you and me, pain free,
MZ

I'm Back!!!

Hi everyone! Long story (which I'm writing about right now) but I have been missing from the internet world for close to six months, and I must say I have missed it. There's so much info out there and people have so much to say that I can't imagine life without it...although I just lived it and it was a pain in the a**!!!

I'm ready to start doing posts more often, working on one right now so please check back. I have learned so much in the past six months.

Here's to you and me, pain free,

MZ