The near-constant analysis that comes with trying to live with this illness is tiresome.
I don’t analyse my symptoms anymore. It’s been years since I’ve had to be in the the symptom diary phase.
But I don’t have the luxury of approaching life without examining and analysing things.
The freedom to live without analysing everything has long gone.
“Is this my new baseline and so the place where I should be trying to live at? Or am I still more unwell after a cold and should continue to be doing only the basics of life and personal care to allow my body to recover more?”
“Is four days between having a visitor and having a half hour phone call enough of a gap?”
“Should I have a very rare nap, or stick with radical rest?”
“If I wash my hair today to allow myself enough time to recover from the act of doing so, will it not be greasy again by the time I come to leave the house, the very reason why I’m washing my hair in the first place? Can I get away with doing it tomorrow instead or will that risk me being unable to leave the house in a few days time?”
“If it’s a one-off should I do two things in two days because the joy they bring might just outweigh the consequences doing them will bring?”
Should I not know my body and these answers by now?!
I’ve been trying to eradicate the word “should” from my vocabulary since becoming unwell but that’s more in the way of “I should be able to X Y and Z by now”, and “I should be living independently in my mid 30s”.
“Should”, along with the weighing up of everything, can’t help but stick around when it comes to the analysis of what it is I can get away with asking my body to do.
With no medical treatment or support we’re left to soldier on and mould something of a new life for ourselves. But doing so raising questions about what on earth we need to be doing to protect our bodies, but also our minds.
And with the ongoing pandemic, and being in the minority of people who are even aware/acknowledging that fact, I must also factor that in to everything I do and everyone I see.
It actually softens the blow when my body makes decisions for me by simply being too unwell to do whatever it is I’m weighing up…
'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw 