Grit and determination

I can feel the muscles in my arms contract and relax and I move each finger. It’s hard – like lifting weights at the gym that are that much heavier than you’re used to. 

I am incredibly proud of myself for managing to sit up at about 12pm. It took a very long time. Hours even. If I’m sitting up it’s easier to stop myself from falling back to sleep. The easy option would have been to not bother and to stay magnetised to my mattress. But that would have meant I could have easily slipped back into sleep again, and I’d already overslept. 

I would have been so easy to sleep the day away today. But my body is confused about what it needs. It does not need sleep. The repairs that happen to every human body during sleep have already been made. My body just doesn’t register this fact. It craves more sleep, yet what it needs is rest and kindness. 

I want to cling on to my better routine of sleeping only at night. It somehow makes me feel like I have more control over the intense power of M.E. It allows me better quality of life to be awake during daylight hours. It’s just more normal. Although it tends to take me so long to kick into gear that I am at my most ‘lively’ just before it’s time to wind down and go to bed!!! It sounds ridiculous but I often feel I don’t have the energy to fall asleep. It’s such a battle – to blot out the symptoms and fall asleep. 

This is not to say that those sufferers who sleep during the day are doing it wrong. There is no right or wrong because no two sufferers are affected the same.