In the past few days we have had to have a real push to try and get another room finished in this, seemingly, endless saga of decorating...and no I don't mean tinsel and baubles and trees...I mean Polyfilla and rollers, paint and sandpaper, emulsion and vinyl silk ...and wallpaper. I spent two whole days (with minimal rest periods) wallpapering over the weekend and into this week and I am tired.
This tiredness is veering between fatigue that pleads for me to go back to bed and wired/tired where adrenaline whooshes through me like a torrent and I am almost hyper. Well...not almost...I am. Yesterday somebody said something to me that was perfectly mundane and yet somehow I found it amusing and laughed and laughed until I was crying ...happy tears but laughing all the same..at something not funny at all. Yesterday I was so nattery, nattery and so outside my boundaries whilst chatting to someone on Facebook that today I felt duty bound to send a message for being so over-the-top. I wasn't offensive and the recipient of this 'out-of-control-puppyness' was fine about it all (thank God) but I felt mortified. I felt like I had become the legless one at the party who has to go to everyone the next day and apologise for dancing on the table with your knickers on your head !
Jodi Bassett has written about these adrenaline surges here and now I think of it I realise that this has been going on for years. Whenever I'm tired but in a reasonable phase of health (i.e.not at death's door) I become almost manic....rushing about too quickly, talking at nineteen to the dozen, stumbling over words, rushing through to do lists.....until I go 'phut! I seem to have no internal regulator that knows how to pace. Is that because I have had M.E. for so long....over 35 years....or was I always like this anyway and that has led me to become more ill ?
Certainly there does seem to be a common thread running through the lives of people I know who have M.E.: prone to perfectionism, wanting to care for other people, wanting to ensure everyone and everything is 'all right, putting other people before oneself, and pushing on...regardless...always pushing on.
I've started reading Toni Bernhard's book 'How to Be Sick'. Almost everyone I know in the 'M.E. Community is reading it too. Once again there in black and white is the story of another caring, conscientious individual; always trying to do her best by her spouse, children, grandchildren, her students (she was a Law Professor) ...going back to work despite everything, despite it being obvious (in hindsight...always in hindsight !!!) that it would be better to stop working, stop doing and just be. This is not intended as any criticism of Toni...just an observation: an observation of how many of us seem to follow that path. I know I did. Time and again I fell and time and again I got up, dusted myself off and went back into the fray.
What interests me is the lessons that Toni says she has learnt/is learning from being so ill for so long (she first became ill at the about the same time I was diagnose in 2001). It would seem that Toni has always been interested in exploring a spiritual path and in particular Buddhism and so she has used that experience and knowledge to try and make sense of what has happened to her. Interestingly too, I have also felt an affinity with Buddhism and yet not had the same time or 'push' to explore that way of seeing the world to the extent of Toni. Nevertheless I still find myself nodding all the time I read the book and there does seem to be only one way to really deal with being unwell: to somehow yield to it and accept it and understand that somehow, for some reason this is how it is for you and how it is meant to be. No matter how uncomfortable, how gruelling, how miserable...this is how it is. No amount of wriggling and anger and frustration (though God only knows we all feel those things because we are human, because we are imperfect) will 'fix' things. For now, it is as it is and once that acceptance is there, the situation becomes a little easier to bear.
I suppose this post and the last have a common theme...in that acceptance seems to be the way: not giving in but resting back and 'watching the day' as someone once told me and trusting that somehow 'all will be well'
This tiredness is veering between fatigue that pleads for me to go back to bed and wired/tired where adrenaline whooshes through me like a torrent and I am almost hyper. Well...not almost...I am. Yesterday somebody said something to me that was perfectly mundane and yet somehow I found it amusing and laughed and laughed until I was crying ...happy tears but laughing all the same..at something not funny at all. Yesterday I was so nattery, nattery and so outside my boundaries whilst chatting to someone on Facebook that today I felt duty bound to send a message for being so over-the-top. I wasn't offensive and the recipient of this 'out-of-control-puppyness' was fine about it all (thank God) but I felt mortified. I felt like I had become the legless one at the party who has to go to everyone the next day and apologise for dancing on the table with your knickers on your head !
Jodi Bassett has written about these adrenaline surges here and now I think of it I realise that this has been going on for years. Whenever I'm tired but in a reasonable phase of health (i.e.not at death's door) I become almost manic....rushing about too quickly, talking at nineteen to the dozen, stumbling over words, rushing through to do lists.....until I go 'phut! I seem to have no internal regulator that knows how to pace. Is that because I have had M.E. for so long....over 35 years....or was I always like this anyway and that has led me to become more ill ?
Certainly there does seem to be a common thread running through the lives of people I know who have M.E.: prone to perfectionism, wanting to care for other people, wanting to ensure everyone and everything is 'all right, putting other people before oneself, and pushing on...regardless...always pushing on.
I've started reading Toni Bernhard's book 'How to Be Sick'. Almost everyone I know in the 'M.E. Community is reading it too. Once again there in black and white is the story of another caring, conscientious individual; always trying to do her best by her spouse, children, grandchildren, her students (she was a Law Professor) ...going back to work despite everything, despite it being obvious (in hindsight...always in hindsight !!!) that it would be better to stop working, stop doing and just be. This is not intended as any criticism of Toni...just an observation: an observation of how many of us seem to follow that path. I know I did. Time and again I fell and time and again I got up, dusted myself off and went back into the fray.
What interests me is the lessons that Toni says she has learnt/is learning from being so ill for so long (she first became ill at the about the same time I was diagnose in 2001). It would seem that Toni has always been interested in exploring a spiritual path and in particular Buddhism and so she has used that experience and knowledge to try and make sense of what has happened to her. Interestingly too, I have also felt an affinity with Buddhism and yet not had the same time or 'push' to explore that way of seeing the world to the extent of Toni. Nevertheless I still find myself nodding all the time I read the book and there does seem to be only one way to really deal with being unwell: to somehow yield to it and accept it and understand that somehow, for some reason this is how it is for you and how it is meant to be. No matter how uncomfortable, how gruelling, how miserable...this is how it is. No amount of wriggling and anger and frustration (though God only knows we all feel those things because we are human, because we are imperfect) will 'fix' things. For now, it is as it is and once that acceptance is there, the situation becomes a little easier to bear.
I suppose this post and the last have a common theme...in that acceptance seems to be the way: not giving in but resting back and 'watching the day' as someone once told me and trusting that somehow 'all will be well'
