Well then. It’s only February and my spoons are already limited.
Since I can see the questionmarks hover above y’all’s heads, I am referring to the Spoon Theory , which, imo, describes it wonderfully what it means to live with a chronic or mental illness and how you need to be careful in using your energy:
The theory suggests that people living with chronic illness, chronic pain, or disability have a limited amount of energy (represented by spoons) to spend on completing tasks on any given day. This means people living with chronic health conditions have to make many difficult, energy-consuming choices about how to spend their limited energy.
And unfortunately, due to some circumstances that I had little to no influence on, my energy levels have been ridiculously depleted for some time already.
One reason was me being sick-ish from early October until a couple of days ago. No kidding. There was an infection which neither fully broke out nor entirely healed. There were days when I was doing okay, but also days when I felt like I was coming down with the flu and big time so. It got worse towards the end of the year, including a shortness of breath which was certainly concerning. That, and the fact that my heart rate went up at the slightest bit of activities. UGH!
When I went to visit my Mom and my godson for NYE, I had to stop after every couple of steps to catch my breath whilst walking to the bus stop. Whenever I’d do my laundry and put said laundry up on the drying rack, I was gasping for air. Once at my Mom’s, my voice also decided to fuck off, talking got super difficult and exhausting. Unfortunately, that also meant that I wasn’t really up to shenanigans with my godson – one day, we were playing table soccer, we had agreed on three matches, but after the first one, I had to throw in the towel. Not because of having lost (I actually DO win against him every now and then), but because I was coughing up a lung and felt a tightness in that chest area.
No. Fun. Y’all.
Since I had no idea what the fuck was going on, I also made the (for me) heartbreaking decision to sell my concert ticket, but until I wasn’t given a diagnosis as to why my lungs were acting up like that, I felt better safe than sorry and decided to back out of the concert.
At the end of last month, I finally had an appointment at my pulmologist, and finally could literally breathe a sigh of relief:
my lung functions are still top notch, it’s not post Covid, and I was prescribed an asthma spray as well as cortisone tablets (which had done the job before) to cure this shit.
And what can I say? I am able to breathe properly again, hoo-fucking-RAY.
Being in limbo about what’s wrong plus some other tricky stuff I was caught in caused A LOT of mental stress I could’ve done without, that’s for sure. It has taken its toll, physically as well as mentally. I feel totally depleted, and, as I’ve said, I don’t have enough spoons these days. I need to do a whole lot of stuff in the household, but, and this is not a cop-out whatsoever, I lack the energy left, right, and center. There are some days when I actually am ready to tackle various things, but there are also days when the biggest achievement of the day is to get up and get dressed.
The past couple of weeks and months weren’t easy on me, the constant worries, being sick-ish for such a long time, the state of the world, all that …it left a mark.
These days, I am just taking things slowly, trying to get back into the swing of things, looking for things to look forward to, and later this week, I will have an appointment with my psychiatrist where I sure will be able to address all those things that have been going on and hopefully come up with some kind of plan here. However, I shall not rush into some kind of recovery from this, as that has backfired a couple of times already in the past. Nah. I am doing things my way here, carefully distributing my energy, restoring said energy, and taking care of my spoons again.
If it takes a couple of weeks or months to recharge, so be it. The one thing I have learned in all those years of battling with a mental illness (or, in my case, several of those) it’s that a) the Road to Recovery is never a straight line, but will come with detours, ups and downs, and b) it will take time. Healing’s messy, too, but who says that chaos cannot bring beautiful things to life?
For now, I will just stick to my escapisms that have helped me in the past already – and still do! – and see where this is going. Hopefully, my doc will have some nice tips and insights as well on Wednesday.
So long …
*******
photo: mine
Ocean Soul 