Woah I’m Going To Barbados!

In May I wrote a really honest post for fibromyalgia awareness day 2015. I opened up and talked about all of the things that I miss the most– those things that I feel fibromyalgia has robbed me of. Top of my list was being spontaneous. I am the type of person who has always loved making spur of the moment decisions to do things. It’s exciting, fun and adventurous! Sadly, being spontaneous has just not been possible living with fibromyalgia. Now my life is all about planning, pacing and living within my energy envelope. Let’s be blunt– what that equates to is a whole lot of boring!

There is nothing exciting about trying to recover from chronic illness. It’s essentially a full-time job where– day-in, day-out– you pace yourself, rest and make choices that will help you to feel as well as possible. You patiently persist and it’s a long old road. I know that it will be worth it in the end and I fully appreciate why I am doing this. I keep the end goal in the forefront of my mind but for the hard working, go-getter type personalities that this illness typically affects (i.e. me), recovery can be really hard at times.

You see everyone around you moving forward and doing exciting things with their lives and you feel completely stuck. It’s like playing a waiting game; you want to do more but you physically can’t. It feels like your life is on pause while you wait for your body to play catch up. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like this all of the time but it is exactly how I have been feeling recently.

I’ve been dreaming of a holiday for a long time. I pushed the idea to the back of my mind as travelling really takes it out of me and I worried about the potential negative impact that going away would have on my recovery. Travelling when you have a chronic illness can set you back and cause flare ups. I thought my staycation would be fulfilling enough and for a while it was. But then the desire to go away reappeared. Suppressing this desire to travel is what has led to me feeling like I just described above. This has not been helped by the fact that Timehop on Facebook has recently been reminding me of past trips I have taken. I therefore had a moment of madness!

One of my friends is always travelling. It is her passion and if she is not away then she is planning her next adventure. At the weekend we were discussing the fact that next year we are all turning 30. It’s something that I just can’t quite cope with. It’s not anything to do with the age as such, I think it’s more because I feel like I have lost a good part of my twenties to illness and that’s what makes me sad. My friend told me not to be so down about it because everyone turning 30 basically means lots of excuses to go away on celebratory holidays. I like her thinking!

A few days ago I sent her a message to say I would quite like to go to Santorini for my 30th… or before because I just really wanted to go away! To which she replied that she was thinking of going to Barbados in November. Cue pangs of jealousy and complete fear of missing out. Turns out she had found an amazing deal (she’s awesome at that!) and right away I told my husband about it. He really wanted to go too. So we had what I like to call a “fuck it” moment. We decided to be spontaneous and book flights too.

So I am going to Barbados!!! Part of me is super excited. The other part of me wonders if it is really such a good idea given the long-haul flight. But a week chilling in the sun and doing nothing but relaxing and recharging sound like utter bliss. I actually think it’s just what I need. So a warning to anyone that knows me– between now and November I am very likely to do your head in singing this:

It’s like Ice Ice Baby and California Love all over again. You have been warned! I am so unbelievably excited.

UPDATE:> Read about my trip to Barbados here.