Doing Better

Today I am doing better. James and I decided last night to take his car to a repair shop to see if they could figure out what the problem was since it was escaping everyone else around us. That calmed me down a bit, aside from the money part, so we just prayed it wouldn't be anything big and wouldn't be over $300. I got up this morning and took the car into Brakes Plus. I was there for an hour when they came out asking me questions and saying they were having the same problem with the brake pedal that I was. They suggested bleeding the brakes again and then they would test drive it again. I told them to go ahead and do that. I sat there for about three hours total waiting for them to finish working on the car. They said they had a free shuttle and would be happy to drive me home and call me once it was done, but at this point I was so vested in the car that I wanted to be there when they found out what was wrong. So I politely declined and said I would just wait. I did bring my Nintendo DS for entertainment, just in case it took longer.

There was a Good Housekeeping magazine there that I decided to look through while I waited. I got all the way through the January 2010 issue with Brooke Shields on the cover, when the very last article on the very last page caught my eye. The article stated with the sentence, "I used to be able to sing...". It was written by a woman who used to sing and talk and cheer until one day her friends began asking her if she was just getting over a cold or something. Her voice always sounded hoarse and she found that she would easily lose her voice. She went to her doctor who told her that she had developed cysts on her vocal folds due to overuse of her voice and then went to speech therapy to see how she could improve it. Her speech therapist told her she needed to stop talking. The therapist worked with her on getting her voice stronger...or at least what she had left of it. The woman can no longer sing, no longer shout, and cannot engage in conversations in loud, crowded places. She pined for the days when she could sing for her own enjoyment and for the chance to sing to her children. She wrote about how she felt like she had lost her identity and how she didn't know how to deal with having her voice gone. It was tough, but ultimately she realized that her voice was not her defining characteristic and she was not lost without it. She realized that she was the person she was in spite of not having a voice. It put my situation into perspective. I realize now that I may never get my voice back fully, but I know my voice does not define me. I can still appreciate good music when I hear it, and I can help out in other ways instead of singing. I will more than likely have days when I wish I could sing again, but for the most part, I am happy that I actually have a voice to speak with. In time, I think I will learn to appreciate the little things surrounding the loss of my singing and cheering and speaking in loud crowded places, just like the woman I read about. It was a good article that gave me comfort.

About thirty minutes after I finished the article the repair shop said they were done with my car and it was fixed. I was shocked. I asked what was the matter and they said they just bled the brakes and got a lot of air out of the brake system and then they test drove it and everything was fine. I was so happy! It only cost me about $60.00 (I got some replacement windshield wipers as well) and happily drove about town applying my brakes as the situation warranted, with much more confidence than I had going in.

So, today was a much better day than yesterday. And now, I'm off to take a nap. Even happy days make me exhausted! :)