“I exist as I am, that is enough.” Walt Whitman
I love the spring. The possibilities and the optimism of the season is uplifting to me. However, it is also a double-edged sword. Spring means I feel energized, and that energy makes me feel like I want to do all of the things. Lately, I have ended each day feeling so frustrated with myself. I thought I would give you a snapshot of what my inner dialogue has been like. “I wanted to do X. Y and Z today.”, “You’re getting worse because you can’t finish anything.”, “You are going to end up in a facility if you keep declining.”, “Kip has to do everything lately and that is not fair to him.” I included that dialogue because I am sure some of you have a similar conversations with yourselves at times.
I have not been sleeping well because I have been in a lot of pain. The voice gets louder at times when I am not well rested. My memory gets worse, which starts another inner dialogue that is equally negative. I then start worrying about everything, even the ridiculous. This all culminated in a massive argument with my husband the other evening. I started going over my list of all of the things I hadn’t done that day and beating myself up for it. Usually, he stops me on that path but that day, he followed me down the rabbit hole. When I was saying that we were going to have to move into an apartment if I continue to get bad enough, he followed it with, “So what if we do?” That kind of shook me out of it a bit. He said eventually, that might happen. Eventually, we will get older and maybe it will not be feasible for us to maintain such a big house. We talked about what that would look like and it wasn’t really that bad. We would still be alright. I then pointed out that that was not our situation right now to which he said “I know, so why are you worrying about it now?”
Looking at things when I am not spiraling, I can see that this is my normal spring time relapse I am in. I have been worse at times, and I will get better. Time to get back to my relapse basics. Take it easy. If I can’t vacuum today, I can do it tomorrow. If I can’t do it for a long time, I can hire someone to come in and clean when my husband is too busy with work. Kip also made a good point the next day. Unfortunately, I have a disease that is going to progress and take away my ability to do things over time. The more I fight it, the harder life is going to be. He said something that will be on my list of quotes to remind myself of. “You are not a list of the things you do in a day. You are enough whether you do anything or not that day.” He’s a pretty insightful guy at times but don’t tell him I said that.
It is so frustrating when what you can “do” starts to decline. Over the years I have had to adjust to a lot of losses. I will adjust to whatever this relapse takes from me as well. I will get back to doing things that fill me up. Just maybe for shorter durations of time or spread out over a longer time. I did some painting that took me a few days. I started my blog with it. I put the phrase on it “You are made of sunshine and stardust.” In the light of a new day, I can realize that I am pretty fantastic, and I still would have been fantastic if I did not do the painting and did not make dinner every night.
I am enough and you are all enough just because we are all here fighting. Whether we complete 5 things on our to do list today or none. The biggest item we can do is keep pushing on and loving ourselves and having coffee of course.
Pour yourself a cup and practice loving kindness to yourself because you are wonderful whether you “do” anything or not.
Love Christine
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