Links:

17089.1

Great Saturday morning "OOB" Family   Well it can be great if you try hard enough,  happiness is what you make it.  It doesn't follow us around, we must seek out the people that lift our spirits.  Friends want the best for us, but sometimes their perception of happy means a totally different thing than what we are looking for.  Acceptance is huge in today's worldly scheme.  Getting knocked down in life with any chronic illness can be detrimental to our self esteem, it's easy to get caught up in, because let's face it, none of us were prepared for long term battles and dealing with the stigma attached to this blood born virus.  When it is revealed, it can be crippling to our lives, unless we find ways to reinvent ourselves and keep going strong.  Every fiber of our being is rearranged in chaotic distress when diagnosed with a transmittable virus,  that is to be expected, but when family and friends keep to themselves, we feel isolated and undeserving of their love out of fear of passing any germs to them.  We know better, but the devastation and  pain is still there.  We know they will not be affected by hep c, but they don't know it for sure.  Then the walls come up you know the invisible kind that keep growing thicker as time progresses and our disease progresses.  It is a natural born instinct to survive, and protecting ones life outweighs everything else.  How do we cope, how do we fit in a world that shuns people that are ill, how do we live happily ever after, when it's all over?  We learn from the best people we know, we learn how to share our innermost feelings and passion  with each other.  We turn every negative into a positive and we trudge through the battle fields until the war is over. For some the war is never conquered.  We don't magically jump right back into life with no scars, we come to a place like "OOB" and automatically understand one another, because we have been there and beyond.  We share a deep respect and passionate love for life, because our lives have been accosted.  We share the sword, that kills our common enemy, we've built a fortress of love in terabyte's one gig at a time !  One post at a time is more powerful than thousands that don't hit home. One sincere smile shared with others is better for us, because they always come back to you.  One kind word softly spoken can change the world.  I love you  Kat;  Host of "Hep C Out Of Bounds"