I sometimes wonder how healthy people feel. I don’t think many of them are aware of their privilege. They just go on about their lives: get up in the morning filled with energy, go to work, have a social life, exercise, travel, cook. I have realized that people first recognize what a health privilege is when they have lost it. I don’t think I have ever been in good health. Honestly, even as a kid, I was always sickish. And I was always scared. Both my mental and physical health were pretty shot already then. But still, now as an adult, I still haven’t come to any kind of acceptance about it. I still get confused when I am out of spoons, I still ignore the strong link between my mental and physical symptoms. I am somehow still stuck in that wishful thinking that I will wake up one morning and everything will be fine. This is all temporary. Because, fuck, if this is it, then how am I supposed to even want to exist?
Everything about my health is intertwined, and as I have many chronic mental and physical health conditions, I often don’t even know which illness is causing what. All I know with certainty is that when I am mentally unwell, then I am most likely also unwell physically, and vice versa. It does become easier to handle the mental symptoms when I have the physical energy, when my body is doing what it is supposed to be doing. And when I am mentally alright, I can easier push through the physical stuff. And you know, I am aware of spoon theory. I am aware of having to rest, sleep, eat, hydrate, exercise, do self-care. But I can’t always do all that. All the damn routines in the world won’t cure anything. They “might” make things easier. But should a “might” really take up all my energy? It all just becomes so fucking frustrating.
The reason why I am thinking about this right now is that I have been physically unwell the last few days. And as always, the symptoms are diffuse. I can’t pinpoint where it hurts, or what exactly is wrong. That is one of my major issues anyway: I have an incredibly hard time to assess my physical symptoms, their severity, where exactly they are and if I have felt that way before. I am often very disconnected from my body, so I don’t necessary feel if or what is wrong. I find it uncomfortable to connect and feel my body. I know this is trauma and dissociation related, but that doesn’t make it any easier. And it has its benefits too: I often don’t feel pain or I have a really high pain threshold. I am sure that is something that many people would want.
Well, I don’t connect, or I get overly vigilant. There is a part of me (hey ho, who knows, the DID thing might be my thing …) that is reading every small change in the body, every small symptom. And more often than not, it goes into health anxiety. A headache becomes a tumor or a brainbleeding, asthma becomes lung cancer or Covid, tiredness and fatigue is leukemia. And as if that isn’t enough: the catastrophic thinking leads to panic attacks which then exacerbate the symptoms. And then it becomes a death anxiety which leads to the illogical solution of having to commit suicide to be in control of how the body’s life ends. It is as fucked up as it sounds.
But I am trying to be reasonable. I measure my temperature, my heartrate, my blood glucose levels, my bloodpressure. And if all those are normal, I just go with the most rational conclusion: it is just one of my autoimmune illnesses. I do have Hashimoto’s. IBS and ME. All diagnosed, all real. I also have diabetes and PCOS, and most likely PMDD and MS. It is a never-ending struggle. And all the symptoms are diffuse. I fucking hate it.
And what I’d need to do would be to rest, to sleep, to get fresh air, to not exert myself too much. But my mental health doesn’t really allow that. I sleep terribly. I have always slept terribly because of my bipolar disorder, but also because of the fear of falling asleep, because of night terrors, sleepy paralysis and nightmares. I have proper insomnia. I have been on sleeping medications in the past, those were better times. But I am trying to stay away from psychiatry. Who knew that when you are older, surviving on three to four hours of sleep for weeks on end, is barely possible? So fuck yeah, my mental illnesses make my physical illnesses worse.
Add to that flashbacks, panic attacks, switching, anxiety, amnesia – all that takes so so much energy. But still, I am unable to rest. Because if I try to do nothing (like sit on the sofa the whole day, and watch Netflix), I feel like I am a loser. I need to be productive to experience any kind of feeling of self-worth. So if I rest, I feel shit about myself. And if I go down to zero and just lie down and breathe? Hello anxiety, hello flashbacks, hello panic. I have to constantly distract myself to not end up in some kind of desperate mental state. I can not stop and rest and breathe. So what I end up doing is having to decide if my mental or physical symptoms are the priority, and which ones I can tend to.
More often than not, I push through any kind of physical discomfort I am experiencing. And slowly, I am always running out of spoons. And then I sit there and wonder what is wrong with me. Why I am feeling so shit. Because surely the only real diagnosable illnesses (Hashimoto’s, Diabetes and PCOS) are under control. And I maybe don’t even have all the other things, because hey, I could really just be a weak loser who is lazy and whiny. Maybe this is how a human being is supposed to be feeling and I am just so fucking weak, I can’t deal with it. Other times, I think that really, all my issues are physical and I really don’t have any mental illness at all.
The last few days have been really crappy physically, and I have also been feeling low mentally. I am more prone to tears, to flashbacks, to anxiety, hopelessness and despair. I am incredibly exhausted although my brain is restless. I have been feeling extremely cold, and then extremely hot. I am very fatigued. I sometimes feel like I can’t breathe and I have a bit of a cough and sniffles here and there. So I thought, hey, let’s take a Covid-test. But, surprise, it came back negative.
Logically, my time of the month is coming in the next 5 to 10 days. So yes, part of this is hormonal. I have been pushing way too hard the last four weeks and I have definitely run out of spoons. I can feel it when there are things that I usually can do with the no problem, now seem like a real hurdle because I don’t feel like I have the energy for it. I have burnt myself out. Pollen are flying like crazy right now and the air inside our home is quite dry. So my allergies and asthma are acting up. And my mixed bipolar episode seems to be slowing turning into a bipolar depression. So what am I supposed to be doing? Rest. But can I do that, without panicking about all the physical symptoms and thinking I am dying? Nope.
Today I left the house. I went to the post office, spent 15 minutes at the beach, walked up to the pet store and then went grocery shopping. The whole time I felt absolutely terrible physically. I was dizzy and fatigued. My eyes were teary and my nose was itchy. I had a hard time walking up a steep hill. In the grocery store I had to hold on to the cart almost the entire time and while I was cold-sweating, all I could think of was: “What if I died right here, right now, in front of all these people? It would be the most humiliating moment possible”. I guess my anxiety always wins. And even right now, feeling all those symptoms, I am still trying to find a possibility that seems easier to accept: this must be Covid. But it fucking isn’t. I hate this.
Fragments of Reality 