I Should

Any day where I am not at work leaves me with a raging battle in my head. I should do something! The problem is that it is not always possible to do something, and some times it is more useful to you to do nothing.

I woke up this morning with a plan of action. I was going to clean and tidy. I was going to put the washing on and do washing up. I was going to sort through my wardrobe, and I was going to go for a walk. Wonderful. Except. I woke up this morning and my stomach was hurting, my head was hurting and I felt exhausted.

OK, change of plan. Forgo the cleaning, that can wait a day, and focus on the wardrobe, washing up and going for that walk.

I got out of bed and had breakfast. I sat down in the lounge and I did not move again.

I know there are people out there that would say “sitting down is the worst thing you can do, you should just get up, stay up, and get stuff done” to which I say, sure…would you like to spend a day testing that theory whilst you are dealing with chronic pain and fatigue????

No, that isn’t fair. It is not their fault for not understanding. But it isn’t helpful advice…it is also the thing that my brain repeats for an hour or so on a day like that, normally a few moments in to me not doing anything. My brain pipes up with the “you shouldn’t have sat down” but by that point it feels very much like someone saying “mind your head” to the person that has just bumped their head.

I then proceeded to spend the majority of the day locked in a repeated argument in my head. My brain obsessing over everything I “Should” be doing, whilst I am desperately trying to argue back that…it is ok to rest.

My brain argues “you are physically capable of doing something useful right now, so you should be doing something useful.” Again, resting is useful. Resting serves a purpose. Resting helps you recharge your batteries. Resting enables you to heal and feel better. Resting is what keeps you going, and when you do not allow yourself to rest you burn out and end up physically unable to do stuff for much longer.

“You’re just lying there, doing nothing, feeling sorry for yourself, being useless and wasting your day.” Thanks, yer, that makes me feel so good about myself. No, I am resting because I feel sluggish, I feel exhausted, I feel down and I can feel that encroaching cloud of depression shifting over me. I am resting to avoid that taking over. I am resting to help make tomorrow not be worse than today. The truth is, tomorrow may be the same as today, and I may not get anything done tomorrow either. But, if I rest now, then tomorrow will not be worse than today, and it at least has a chance to be better.

I have spent most of my life with people calling me lazy.

I have spent most of my life with that impacting my opinion of myself.

I have spent most of my life with my bloody brain repeating to me over and over and over that I am a useless, lazy, waste of space, that does nothing and achieves nothing.

Now I know that this is not true. I know better. I know the reason. I know that the depression and the anxiety have very real physical impacts on my body. I know that the fibromyalgia forms limitations to my energy levels and physical abilities. I know that when I am run down and try to push through, I will still end up lying on the sofa doing nothing, but it will take me much longer to recover.

Today I got up with the intention of tidying the house, putting washing on, doing the washing up, sorting the wardrobe and going for a walk. In the end, I spent the vast majority of the day locked in an argument with my brain to get it to let me rest properly so I can feel more capable tomorrow whilst it repeatedly said “I should move, I should tidy, I should do something”.

I wish I could say that I won that particular argument, but it is still on going. I spend the day doing nothing. I ended up forcing myself to do the washing up, after which I felt ten times more exhausted than any human should feel from just washing up some dishes. I then tried to rest with the knowledge that I had at least done something, but my brain was not satisfied with that. So, here I am, writing this, trying to feel like I am achieving something.

Hopefully this satisfies my brain.

JT