Superwoman is D-E-D

Somewhere I lost what I think I was going to say, and it turned into some painful self-contemplation.

There are friends that I have made online that remember Super Woman. Invincible. Offline, as well. Nothing phased me. A catch-phrase: "I'm all right. Always am." has fallen flat. It was something of a thin running joke for a very long time.

I survived it. Didn't matter what you threw at me, I survived it, usually with strained laughter and sheer stubbornness. I'd get over it.

So how do you explain to these people that Super Woman is dead?

There are people that I have never met in person that have been closer to me than any relative. People I utterly adore with heart and soul and that have been there for me, and I for them, time and time again. How do you tell these people that despite that, you no longer would accept a chance to actually meet them? That to show them what I have become and what I have lost would hurt me deeper than the lost chance of becoming closer?

It frightens me.

My husband told me yesterday that he had told one of our old circle about it. We haven't spoken with him much, DG much more than I. He explained, and that I could not walk without a cane, how I could no longer do simple things.

Part of me was torn. I was ... hurt. Angry, that he told, and didn't understand why.

Some part of me still wants to be remembered as invincible.

I know that most of my family does not know, that my monster has not bothered to tell them. She never had before, when I had surgery, or anything else went wrong. And it is strange, where she doesn't seem to care, I know that they do.

I've not told them either. Super Woman syndrome again.

Yet, she invites us down for the traditional holiday dinners. What does she expect to happen if I come, if they see me and realize what she had been hiding? She hasn't done herself any favours. My uncle's wife (as opposed to my mother's sister, who is perhaps the neatest lady I know, and who DOES know) already dislikes my mother intently. I used to wish that I'd been his daughter instead, so that Liz would have been my mother.

It did not take long, the last time we went down for Thanksgiving a few years ago, for them to find out why our trip down there lasted less than 24 hours. And Liz was Angry. I was invited to next time, stay with them.

It is not a bad thought.

My husband has the time off for us to go down this year. But it's at the monster's house this time. (Every year, Christmas and Thanksgiving trade out.) I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can face what is to come when we show up.

I suppose in a way that a lot of it is that fibromyalgia is actually the least of my concerns, as it is also with Heidi and Cairyn. We have other problems that just amplify everything we can worry about.

I just don't want to be remembered as I am now.