Tonight, I had a total meltdown over all of the things missing from my life due to being a Fibro Fighter. It wasn’t like a three-year-old on the floor in the middle of the store turning purple and reaching a volume level that only firetruck sirens can compete with, kind of meltdown. Not on the outside anyway. Outside it was a controlled version of frustration, anger and tears that I quickly put an end to. My inner thoughts though… yeah, they were right there on the floor like a toddler.

What sparked this meltdown was actually my brother. He had just come home from a successful date and somehow I managed to turn the conversation to the reasons why I wasn’t out there dating. I don’t know why I did that. Why couldn’t I just let him tell his story and be happy for him without feeling like I had to justify why I was home alone on the couch on a Friday night? Insecurity and jealousy momentarily kidnapped my rational. What made it worse wasn’t that I was just making excuses, but that I was angry. Really really angry. Not at him, but at the Fibro and at the missing parts of my life because I was a Fibro Fighter. I spat out words at my brother like they were bullets. He bravely just stood there, quietly, and took it. I ranted about not being able to hold down a full time job, about how I have no idea how I would even begin to explain my life to someone on a first date or why I might not even have energy to show up for the date in the first place, and about how (and this was the one that bounced off of him and hit me – HARD) I am starting to see the food delivery drivers more than my own friends. I just melted down and cried.

It was a little while later after I had regained my composure and started acting like an adult again that I started to remember a conversation that I had with my cousin a few nights ago. She is writing her first novel and we were talking about books and writing in general. I confessed to her that I did have an idea for a novel in my head, but that I wasn’t ready to write it because the story was full of holes and major gaps and I had no ideas on how to fill them in. That was when she said “Just pants it. You never know where it will go.” I was so confused. I had to have her explain what “pantsing it” was. She explained it as “writing by the seat of your pants” – you deal with what you know and then fill in the details and missing gaps later.

So now, here I am thinking that I need to apply that idea to my actual life instead of a novel. My life has gaps. The dating gap, the full time job gap, the owning my own place gap, the social gap – all revolving around the big one, the health gap. I have no idea how, or when I should even try to fill them in. But maybe I don’t have to know *now*. I admit that even as I write this, I am struggling with that idea. My geek mind wants to take over and find solutions to the problems in order to fill in the gaps. “Stop talking! Let’s just do it and get it done already!” is what I hear/think inside my head. But as I think it through, pantsing it sounds exactly right and I am starting to realize that I am an expert at this. I feel that all people are. I mean, how many of us actually know what we are doing with our lives and how many of us are just making it up as we go along?

Here is what I know: I know that I am not ready to be dating, but that I can make a greater effort to spend more time with my friends as long as they can be patient and understanding with me, and I trust that they would be. I know that I can’t hold down a full time job right now, but that I can work my part-time job to the very best of my ability and pick up some odd jobs like babysitting and graphic design work along the way to help supplement. I know that I am not healthy and angry about not being healthy, but that I also have hope that it won’t always be this way because I know that I am working with my doctors to make sure that we are doing all that we can to keep this illness under control.

The rest? I’ll just have to pants it and see what happens.

My cousin is right. You never know where it will go.