Make yourself a tea. This is going to be a long one and I do hope it's worth it.
At the end of 2015 I was -
finally - diagnosed with ME after suffering for just shy of two and a half years. Since my formal diagnosis, I've been pretty open about it on Twitter - and found a community that has helped infinitely with my mental state moving from "
Yup, I'm definitely crackers." during the summer (
genuinely.) whilst I was being passed from doctor to doctor having blood test upon blood test to "
I'm okay with this - look how good you're doing, you might not be able to run a marathon but at least you god out of bed today." somewhere in October and, most recently to "
Oh look! There's others too! I'm not the only one who attempted to cut through a JIF lemon."*
*This - whilst being a perfect metaphor for many of the stupid things I do before my brain wakes up enough to notice - was an actual tweet by a fellow ME sufferer and blogger.
But, back to plans. Up until now my life has been one huge 'When I' - when I finished primary school I knew exactly what school I wanted to go to. There I knew what I wanted to be before leaving that school and that I wanted to go to sixth form not college. That I wanted to go to university and that, once all that was over I wanted to move into my own place. Whilst, in retrospect, these seem like relatively simple but big changes, I planned them meticulously over a period of years, consciously worrying over them and preparing for various scenarios. I was a plan-a-holic.
2015 was the year - I guess if I had to pick a year it was
my year - that all that stopped. I graduated, moved, learnt to rive, got a job. I ticked all the boxes in my life plan with two months to spare and now I find myself floating between a far off future and now-ness.
Had it been six months earlier I'd be chastising myself for replying to an e-mail a day later than I said I would or my inner voice would be sparking up telling couch-potato me that this was not the most productive use of my time and that I wasn't as good as this person or that person that went to the gym and clearly put more time into their blog. My planning was working against me.
It took me a long time to realise that the reality is that whilst I do have that time, I don't necessarily have the energy. I physically can't always be 'on' or make any kind of concrete plans. AND - future Charley - THAT'S OKAY. Sometimes I can't even speak coherently. Social engagements (and blog events too!) have to be planned around rest periods and simply being a normal human being is exhausting. There's a constant split in my attention between my fatigue, pain and inner voice that is constantly crooning about how a 'normal person' would have handled things better. Yet still I tell myself off for not accomplishing these goals whether it be on a daily, weekly or life-plan basis.
After studying psychology for so many years, I thought I would have the vaguest of ideas about the mind but I can honestly say that I still have little clue as to why I do the things I do (
read: JIF lemon incident). I just know that it's all in the little improvements. From finding a way to prop my arm up on the foot of the bed so I can dry my hair without exhausting myself to realising I didn't substitute any words for their homophones in my latest e-mail. I need to focus on the little wins for a change, rather than the big ones.
So that's why I'll be throwing out my to-do list for 2016. What about you?
