September month is my self-recovery month

Honestly, I never meant to not update this blog for a month and a half ago but work did catch up on me and I wasn’t able to find the right time to post anything last month which should have been an exciting month for blogging. Technically, I did plan something big to blog about last month but considering that I just didn’t have any time or if I can be honest, I just didn’t find the time to blog about anything. Last month was the anticipation for Malaysia’s National Day so the plan was to blog about anything related to my birth country. This month is a dedication to self-recovery but just as September about to draw in, I realised that I couldn’t quite blog anything about self-recovery unless I have actually started the journey, right? So earlier this month, I started my journey on my own personal self-recovery and this post is where I share the real problems with myself and what I want to do to recover from the problems and perhaps live better in the future.

See, the start of 2019 was really rough for me and so far it has not yet recovered or should I say I have yet to find a day or a time where I could call the highlight of my 2019. Last year, I had a great blast making new friends and of course going on my first ever trip overseas after so long. Believe it or not, I haven’t been out of the borders of Malaysia for the longest time so to be able to get to do that, it felt amazing. This year, so many things have taken place in my life. None are tragic but none are anything I will ever bring over to the coming year.

First and foremost, I realised that I am not a healthy person. I have been suffering from eczema (I think) since I was twelve. I only knew that it was eczema back in 2015 after considering going to a specialist and they have confirmed that I was suffering from eczema. Eczema a skin problem that has no cause and no cure but it is not fatal nor is it contagious. Though my skin looks like some diseased amphibian as time goes by. I noticed that my eczema will spread around the areas that I can reach and scratch like my face, neck, arms, belly, waist, hips and butts. Seriously, last month it got so much worse. It used to be just patches of dry skin that gradually gets darker and darker as I continue to scratch. Last month, my skin starts breaking out and bleed and even worse that my entire arm starts to feel the sting even while I am sleeping. So I started reading up about other people’s journey to recovery from eczema and almost every one of them says the same thing – recovering from eczema is not about anything medical but it is a change of lifestyle. This means that my skin problem started with my lifestyle from my day to day activities to my diet. I don’t really take care much about what I consume nor do I exercise ever to get rid of all the bad food I take in. So in many ways, those toxins gather up inside my gut and without getting rid of them, the toxins start to, I guess, in a way attacking my body which resulted in my skin problem and every other health problems that I am currently facing.

I am a very stressful person and that’s not a surprise because almost everyone in the world is but some people do know how to control them and some, like me, don’t know. Stress contributes to my other health issues. Just last year, I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, a condition where half of my face was slightly paralyzed. That scared the wits out of me but after learning what it was, I was advised to go for acupuncture which helped a lot but not entirely. Moreover, sometime in mid-March, I realised that my foot was numb and I learned that I could possibly be suffering from sciatica. I can only truly confirm that it is sciatica after going through an MRI scan. I don’t make that much of money which is why I delayed on the visit to the hospital for the scan to confirmed but I know it is nothing serious because aside of feeling numb, my legs are not weak and everything else is still pretty okay. So my body is truly unhealthy because: –

1. I have eczema which is still not getting any better;
2. Half of my face is still not fully recovered which means my nerve and my facial muscles are still weak;
3. And my back could possibly be suffering from sciatica. 

Now, am I really going to live my life like this? That was the question I asked myself over and over again because that is only the problems that I am facing with my health. I have yet to consider and fess up the problems that I am facing with the other parts of my life like my financial problems. I am still trying to figure out how to plan my finances smartly. So, what am I doing with my personal health? Firstly, I decided to try and change my diet and the first thing I did was to rid my diet of dairy and sugar. Sounds bland and it is but after two weeks, I do start to feel slightly different but only slightly. I was told that in a long time, the recovery will be more apparent and two weeks is still too soon. Other than that, I start to introduce to myself simple stretching methods that I will try to do every morning and every night. Other than that and this is something I am trying to make myself do religiously is exercising in the morning. It’s so hard when you are a sloth for so long because to push yourself to move is not an easy task. I am also consuming more and more fruits and vegetables but like I said, I have only started this change two weeks ago and I am still struggling so I don’t think I can truly confirm anything other than me feeling the slight different of my skin. 

Other than my health and my finances, there is also that habit of mine of too lazy to bring myself closer to my creator. I am a Muslim but other than me calling myself that, I am not taking the rightful responsibilities as a Muslimah. Not even the simple ones like praying five times a day or reciting the Qur’an once in a while. And I am ashamed to say that not every du’a in the Qur’an I can memorise except the important ones. I am pushing myself to be better this month and I am going to share my journey to my own self-recovery and I feel like if I were to post and share my journey, it will be beneficial not only to those who read about it but especially to myself. The most important thing that I learned from looking at myself and accepting the many flaws that I have, I realised how much I crave for tangible things like junk food, travelling and time away from work that unfortunately doesn’t last forever. At the end of the day, my health – mentally, physically and spiritually will be an intangible gift that will last me a lifetime and that should be what I want.