I Needed to Get Sick to Slow Down

I was born an impatient late-bloomer. Let me explain. I was due on April 15, and I was born on April 19. Late-bloomer. Seeing as how my birthday makes me an Aries, well, they are known for their impatience, and I have lived up to that every day of my life. Even as I write this, I just had the idea 3 minutes ago, it is 12:58am. I should be going to sleep. But, if I don’t write it now, it will pass me by. Too many things I haven’t acted on have passed me by, and I am a doer. I take action. It feels unnatural not to. Another part of my Aries charm. So, you can imagine that coming down with a chronic illness that forces me to leave an entire self-sufficient life I have built for myself and move home with my parents at 38 years old, isn’t exactly something that my “GO GO GO” action-oriented, independent personality loved.

Ever since I could speak, I would convey to anyone who would listen how I wanted to be a grown-up, and I wanted to move away to a big city as soon as I could. When I was maybe 4 years old, I noticed that the actress Haley Mills had grown breasts between when she was in the movie “Pollyanna” and when she was in “Parent Trap”. I was so young that I called Pollyanna “Collyanna”, and I called Parent Trap “The Two Collyannas”. I immediately noticed she had matured between the two movies, and I said to my dad, “When I grow up, will I have big boobs like the two Pollyanna’s?”. Not really knowing what to say, he just shrugged, and said, “yes”. To this I replied with so much glee, “OH, I will be so surprised!”. So, years later, when I hit puberty and was still flat-chested, I literally prayed to God every night for boobs. I pictured how big I wanted them to be, and I manifested that shit. While all my friends started getting them in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, mine finally started popping around Sophomore year of high school. (Also, isn’t it weird that sophomore is spelled with that “O” in the middle and not spelled “sophmore”?) And they just kept growing bigger up through the end of college. I got what I asked for, in spades! It took a lot more years than it did for everyone else, and A LOT more years than what I had wanted. Impatient Late Bloomer.

The same can be said for every milestone of puberty for me. I started being interested in puberty and wanting it to start when I was like 6 or 7. It began happening for most people I knew at 10-12 yrs old. And it all happened for me later than everyone else. I was upset about it constantly. Also, all the things that came along with getting older - Rated R movies, dating, boyfriends, parties, later curfews etc etc. I wanted all of those things as soon as I knew what they were. But none of them seemed to happen for me when they did for everyone else. It felt like, I wanted them before everyone else did, and I got them after everyone else did. Some of that was stricter parenting, and some of it was just out of anyone’s control I guess. Heck, I even lost my virginity well after pretty much everyone that I knew. I hated being left behind. I hated not knowing what everyone was talking about. I wanted all of these things, and I wanted them now. Impatient Late Bloomer.

I yearned to move away. I begged to go to an out-of-state college in a big city. I needed to travel the world. I ended up having to stay at a local college one town over from my own. And I didn’t go overseas for the first time until I was 33. I had seen many of my friends go away to school and move out of town before me. And I knew a lot of people that were traveling the world long before me. I craved a life of adventure and excitement. I wanted it more than anything. I just couldn’t seem to make it happen like other people I knew at the same time they were doing it. Impatient Late Bloomer.

There are a 100 other examples of grown-up things that I wanted at a young age, and that happened at a much older age. But, I think the above is sufficient information to get my point across, and also just me telling you right now that there were a lot more should get my point across, as well. But now, is where I tell you how I changed all of that. I may have done all of these other things way later than everyone else, but I was tired of being last, and ready to be the trailblazer I was meant to be. Here, is where the story changes. I got married at 24. Which was before most people I knew. Ha! I was finally doing something before most other people. My life was finally on the fast track I knew it was always meant to be on. Impatient Trail Blazer.

Not so fast Krista. Now, you have to wait on a whole other person that you are legally bound to. You don’t get to move away to the city as soon as you’d like. You don’t get to travel the world together because you are a young, poor, couple with very little money. You don’t really know how to be an adult yet, and neither does your partner. This causes a lot of problems for you both. Problems that become insurmountable. Problems that ruin your marriage. Guess what Krista? Since you were so keen on pushing things to happen faster than they were supposed to, now you get to be the one of the first people you know who files for bankruptcy and gets divorced all before the age of 30. Impatient Trail Blazer?

Now, it is time for a CRASH COURSE in being a real grown-up. You are living in an expensive city, by yourself, paying for everything two people used to pay for on one income. Hey, you were ready to be an adult. Here it is kid. Now don’t you wish you would have just let the natural flow of your late-bloomer lifestyle happen? It took me YEARS to dig myself out of this hole I had created by taking this all on before I was ready. Ok, I am gonna stop ending paragraphs with the “Impatient blah de blah” thing here now. I might start them again later. I don’t know yet. But you get the picture.

Once again, there are a 100 examples of how messed up it all got for me after this, and it was messed up for a long time. But, I am not going to write out a whole bunch, because that’s not the point of this either. I just needed to paint the picture that obviously, there was a lesson to be learned. Yes, I want things to happen quickly. But that isn’t usually what is best for me. In fact, quite the opposite. I needed to learn to be patient, and let things happen the way they are supposed to on the universe’s timeline. It’s ok to be action-oriented and not sit back and hope things will happen for you, but you also can’t push things before they are ready. Especially yourself. That’s the lesson to be learned here.

I didn’t learn it. I was getting ready to turn 30 when all of that happened. I am now 39 and I am actually realizing this lesson as I am typing it right now in real time. Sure, sure. I have always known impatience was an issue of mine, and I needed to work on it. I have always known I was a late-bloomer. But it wasn’t until I sat down to write this, that I put those 2 things together. That being an Impatient Late Bloomer has been a very confusing and frustrating persona for me. Thinking back on all of those old stories and realizing “WHOA! Look at the life trajectory I was on where things were happening later than I wanted them to, then I pushed fate ahead and did something major before I was ready and how it blew up in my face.”

I believe everything happens for a reason, I don’t regret any of those things. It caused me to learn a lot of lessons I needed to learn, and it caused me to learn them the hard way. That’s another annoying thing about me. I tend not to learn things unless it is the hard way. I guess I better start working on that nonsense, too. Ugh. So many life lessons.

My life plan started to finally “come together” in my mid to late 30’s. I lived in a big city. I had a fancy job and a fancy apartment. I lived on my own, independently, and was doing a good job taking care of myself. I had started being able to travel more, and had been overseas a few times. I even had a trip booked for Italy coming up. I had been on way more dates than I care to count, and had finally gotten a chance to get out and have lots of different boyfriends, etc. I had 3 different parties or events to choose from every weekend, and an endless supply of outings I could go on every night of the week if I wanted to. It may have all happened later than I thought it should, and later than I believed it was happening for other people I knew, but it was all starting to “fall into place”. I should’ve been happy.

And, I was happy, to an extent. But something was missing. What I failed to mention earlier, is that from the time I could walk and talk, I wanted to live a creative life. My sole passion was creativity, and I just knew I was going to grow up to work in a creative field. When I was a kid, I would write stories and I would act out every movie I watched, and I started doing theatre from age 10 to my mid 20’s. Then, in my late 20’s, I started doing stand-up comedy where I would write and perform my own material. I did this til my early-30s’. Then, in my early to mid-30’s, I started writing a book, and I would read some of the chapters at storytelling shows, or I would share them on my blog. My whole life, I had always been involved in something creative, and it was always my lifeline. No matter how bad things got, I could use my creativity to fuel my soul. This made me happy.

But, in my mid-late 30’s, I started getting sucked into the corporate life, and let’s face it…. MONEY. I got sucked in for a few reasons. One is, did I mention, MONEY? For the first time since my divorce, I could afford to live comfortably. Eventually, I actually got to start doing some of the nice bougie things for myself that I had always wanted. I could go out and actually do a lot of the fine things the big city had to offer. Restaurants, bars, concerts, theatre, etc. When my friends invited me places, I could finally afford to go. I could sometimes buy myself nice purses and clothes. And GUUUURRRRLLL, I could finally do some traveling sometimes! YAS! Corporate life also offered stability that I hadn’t had my entire adult life, and great benefits to boot. And, it offered something else, something that I hate admitting, but I will. It offered this image of me to other people that I had finally grown up. I was successful. I had a cool life. I worked for a cool company. I did all the above-mentioned things with my money. I had a cool apartment in a cool city. This was the life I had imagined for myself since I was a kid. But, it was missing one very key component.

Creativity. At least not the kind I wanted. And if any of my old corporate bosses are reading this, believe me dear readers when I say that my bosses tried their absolute hardest to incorporate my “creativity” into this. I loved the bosses I had at this corporate job. I still do. I lucked out so hard. They recognized my creativity and humor from day one. So they gave me projects that utilized my writing and assigned me presentations that showcased my humor. They encouraged me to do and try new things at work that would satisfy my insatiable need for creativity. They even gave me opportunities to travel. In fact, they were the reason for my very first trip overseas. They even gave me a budget to start my own mental health program for all of North America.

My former bosses really did empower me in so many ways. But that can only go so far in a corporate job where literally the only goal is to sell a very expensive product to make money for the probably billionaire that owns it. So this is no slight to my bosses or co-workers that supported and appreciated these types of things I was allowed to do. It’s just that, apparently, the type of dreams I was born with, will not be satisfied with being “Corporate Creative”. It has to be “balls to the wall, say and do whatever the fuck I want to say and do with absolutely no filter, be a poor struggling artist, have unlimited freedom with my time and space and speech, no limits” creative.

This is not to say that people who exercise their creativity in their jobs aren’t creative, and it is not to say they are selling out. This is also not to say that there aren’t companies where what they are putting out into the world is important and meaningful, and it isn’t just all about making more money for the super rich owner. And, this is DEFINITELY not to say that I won’t have to tuck my tail between my legs and go back to one of these jobs some day. This is all to say that the type of creating that feeds MY soul, and the type of environment I was working in, just didn’t hit the mark that I apparently needed to hit to feel like I was living my life’s purpose. Funny thing is though, I didn’t realize that until I left the job.

Ok, so after a lot of paragraphs, let’s get to the the reason this is titled “I Needed to Get Sick to Slow Down”. You may be thinking “Why isn’t this titled ‘Impatient Late Bloomer?. It probably should be at this point, but my Taurus Rising is stubborn and wants to stick with the original title I came up with when I had this idea at 12:55am. 

Because I got sick I had to stop working there, I had to stop living in a city, and I had to stop living by myself. I had to blow up my life as I knew it. There will be an article that is dedicated to my sickness. This one isn’t it. For anyone reading this that doesn’t know me, here is the ABRIDGED version. 

Feb. 2020, I traveled to Orlando. I got Covid on that trip. The OG Covid. For many month’s after, my health wasn’t the same. My fatigue was beyond anything I have ever experienced, and it was hard to manage. Luckily, we were in lockdown. I got to work from home. I didn’t have to and couldn’t go anywhere. I was forced to slow down. So, I was able to take a long ass time to heal and feel better. There were ups and downs. Every so often, a new symptom would come along. It started compounding over time. I wasn’t even totally sure it had to do with Covid. I just knew I hadn’t been the same since I had it. I told a few ppl about it, but mostly, I kept it to myself, and just hoped it would all eventually get better. It started with fatigue, then eventually came daily headaches, after that some dizziness, some more fatigue, then brain fog, then some heart palpitations, some more brain fog….like A LOT of brain fog….like “why can’t I remember my parent’s address?” brain fog, some more fatigue…..like A LOT of fatigue…..like “why can’t I get out of bed fatigue?”. Then, some of it would subside. Things would feel a bit better. It would all kind of come and go.

Then, the world opened back up. Back to the office you go. Back to hanging out with people and going out to do things again. Yay, now I can go visit people and travel again. Work is picking back up and we are busy again and there is lots and lots of stuff you can do at work. Ok, so here comes some bigger waves of your fatigue, headaches, and brain fog. These two things, returning to life as we knew it and long haul Covid symptoms, were like two runaway trains on separate tracks next to each other that were both starting to get closer and closer to an intersection where they crossed over. They were running at the same speed at the same time. Then BAM! They intersected and collided. I hit a fucking metaphorical wall that flattened me. I remember the exact moment the collision happened. I went to a concert at the end of the summer in 2021, and the next day, I didn’t get out of bed. And, for the most part, I stayed there for the next 3 months. 

I could hardly get in to the office and had to be remote most days. I wasn’t able to keep up properly with any of my tasks or learn anything new. I couldn’t focus or remember anything. I felt like I had ADD and dementia. And, the fatigue, oh the fatigue. I had a ton of bricks laying on me at all times. Let me tell you how bad it got. I could not scoop my cat’s litter for over 2 weeks at a time, and was too embarrassed to ask anyone for help. I could not do my dishes for about the same amount of time, even though I had a dishwasher, and I had mold in my sink. My fish died, and I couldn’t get to cleaning that up for probably a week and a half after he died. There’s a million things I couldn’t do. Unlike the times before this, the symptoms didn’t ebb and flow. They didn’t happen one day and not the next. There were no good weeks and bad weeks. It was all bad. I literally couldn’t take care of myself. And my family was 6 hours away. Yes, I had friends, but the type of attention I needed, I couldn’t ask friends to do.

I tried to find a doctor, but even that task was too hard to do with the zero energy I had. When I did make calls, no one was taking on new patients. I finally found someone who wasn’t taking new patients, but took pity on me and let me schedule an appt. They confirmed I had long haul Covid. And then after that they were practically unreachable and helped me with nothing else. 

There are so many details I am leaving out, because that would be the whole article. There are so many things that people will probably say “did you do this?” “Did you do that?”. Either I did, and I am just not getting into that detail, or I couldn’t because I was one person living on my own with absolutely no ability to do anything else. Suffice it to say, I had run out of all other options. I needed to move home with my parents. I could not sustain this any longer. I also couldn’t stay with my job remotely, for a number of reasons that I am not going to get into. My mom and my best friend came up, and while I laid in bed for an entire week, they packed my apartment for me, and they held me while I SOBBED. And then I fucking left my entire life as I knew it. Because it was literally the only thing I could do.

Once home, I tried to make the best of it. I told myself that this was a refresh and a restart. I was ready for a change of pace, and I could start planning a new life for myself. I had been bored of Chicago, and was ready to move to NYC. If I hadn’t gotten sick and forced to leave everything, I would have just stayed in Chicago because I had worked so hard to build it all, it was just easier to stay. I was bored of my job and hadn’t really realized it cause I had Stockholm syndrome and was coasting and lightly feeding myself some “corporate creativity”. If I hadn’t gotten sick and forced to leave, I would have just stayed there and dealt with it and carried on in a rut. I was ready to start fulfilling my life’s purpose. I had always been a writer, and the last few years, every ounce of my creative juice and energy had been used for work projects. Leaving me with nothing to use when it came to my own personal projects on my personal time. So, most of my personal writing had ceased. The day I made the decision to come home, I knew I could finally start writing for myself and being creative for myself again. I could maybe even try to do something big with it. I could write my book, and try to publish it. Yes, this was all happening for a reason.

I just knew I would move home with my parents, rest and write for 3 or 4 months, get completely better, and then get a remote full-time job. Since I would be living with my parents, I could save all the money from this full-time job and start building my moving to NYC fund. With all the energy I was saving not having to cook my own meals, clean my own house, do my own grocery shopping etc, I could absolutely just work full-time for an easy job that didn’t involve any of my creative juices, and then use the rest of my time to write my book. By the end of the year, I would have a first draft of my book ready to submit to publishers, I would have a nest egg saved and be ready to move to NYC, and I would be completely healed from my long haul that no one knows anything about how to fix or cure. I was so confident of this, that I wrote “Move to NYC” on Dec 31 of my 2022 calendar. Not so fast Impatient Late Bloomer.

In reality, it took me 3 months to start feeling a tad better. It took me 6 months to feel not quite halfway better. It took me 8 months to be able to get a job where I could work remotely, part-time, and somewhat work around my symptoms. Day 1 of that new job, the only day that I didn’t work remotely so I could go in for training, I got Covid from my co-worker who was training me. Every single symptom came back full force. I became unable to work more than 5 hours a week. Three weeks later, I was laid off. I was back at square one in every possible way.

Now, here we are 4 months after getting Covid a second time, and I am starting to feel a little better, but haven’t even been able to get up to 15 hours a week of work with my new job. From the time I am writing this, Dec. 31 is in one week and not only do I have no money saved and am completely financially in the hole, but I am in no better physical shape to move out on my own again than when I moved home in the first place.  Oh, you silly little Impatient Late Bloomer, you really do set yourself up for disappointment with your unrealistic expectations you get for yourself. 

The writing, well, that is one thing I am still sticking to and working on and fighting for. Right now, it is the only thing I have some semblance of control over. That, and my attitude. Well, somewhat. Despite how this may all sound, I am actually maintaining good spirits and high hopes….sometimes. Not all the time. I am only human. I have my ups and downs. I have my good days and bad days. This does get me down and depressed. But, I keep getting up and fighting.

I have been incorporating more and more and more into my wellness routine. I go to a senior citizens water aerobics class 3 days a week, and I get out on walks in between. I eat avocados and açaí bowls. I take vitamins and supplements, and my depression and anxiety medicine. I go to therapy. I write. I meditate. And, I have REALLY beefed up my spiritual routine with a lot of really cool healing and manifesting shit that I do almost every night and it cleanses the crap outta my soul and my mind. I am working really hard to let go of the pieces of resentment I still have for different people and situations throughout this journey that added to my hardships, and I am focusing on my gratitude for the way larger number of people and situations that have been positive and in my corner and support system on this journey. (Big shout outs to my parents, my brother and his wife, my real true friends, new doctors and medical professionals that actually try to help, and I even have an awesome long haul caseworker now).

I still believe that all of this happened for undeniable reasons. I still believe that I am meant to pursue my creative dreams and goals. I am meant to write and publish my book. I am meant to move to NYC eventually. I am meant to live the life I have always dreamed of. Those beliefs haven’t changed. But, I have added some new reasons to this list. Things that I have much more recently, and probably way too slowly, caught on to. I am meant to learn patience. I am supposed to learn to slow the fuck down. I need to learn that I cannot force these things to happen before they are ready. I couldn’t force my boobs to grow to a D cup before sophomore year of high school, and I can’t force my long haul to go the fuck away because I want to move halfway across the country. I could move thousands of miles away before I was ready. But I have learned from getting married before I was ready (and all the other things I rushed), that I will crash and burn if I push this before my time. Some people never go do scary things cause of fear, and they need to learn to let go and push themselves further. But in a lot of cases (not all, but a lot), I try to jump off the deep end and push myself too far too soon, when I just am not ready. I need to learn to be patient, slow down, and do the things when the time is right. 

And I need to trust myself that I will know when the time is right. Cause I have some pretty bad ass intuition that has only gotten way better and stronger with those aforementioned wellness and spiritual practices I have been doing. Your girl Krista is a damn witch (which I will write a whole other article about some time), and I can and will manifest the shit outta my life. I can and do see the future (to an extent). And good things will come. But, good things come to those who wait. And, what you have clearly learned here, is that waiting is not my strong suit. So, that’s what I am supposed to be working on right now. Waiting. Using this time to work on things I wouldn’t have otherwise worked on. Doing things I wouldn’t have otherwise done. Taking painstakingly slow and methodical steps to build, brick by brick, the actual, real, true grown-up life I have wanted all along. Not the imitation one I was living in my 20’s and 30’s that I tricked myself into thinking was the one I had wanted since I was a little girl.

Looking ahead to my 40’s (which happens in a few months), I am going to take the time to draw a very precise and well-researched map of my grown-up life. I am going to be patient (and when I am not being patient, I am going to remind myself to be patient). And when the time is right, I am going to embark on the grown-up life of my dreams. It will never go exactly according to the plan on the map I draw. Things will always change. And I will have grown enough to accept that, and I will steadfastly push on to make my dreams come true, and will adjust accordingly as needed.

Some people just need to take the leap and do the thing they are scared to do. I need to slow down and be patient for the thing I want to do. And, apparently, my thick head couldn’t handle that concept, so first, I needed to get really sick so that I had no choice but to slow down. Then, by being forced to slow down, I was forced to tune in better with the universal clock and timeline I am on. So now, I am an Action-Oriented, Temporarily Sick, Big-Boobed, Semi-Patient Latebloomer. And for the first time ever, I am ok with it.