June 4, 2003

• The “shoulds”, the “oughts”, limits, boundaries and crap like that…

  
  

  My email tells me that I’m not the only one around here (Xanga-here) who is caught up in activity of unaccustomed intensity.  The real-life here-and-now of my everyday activity is bringing me into contact with others who are likewise so busy that time for sleep and personal hygiene has to be grabbed on the go.  What’s going on?  I dunno, no time to stop and think it through…

  
  

  But once in a while, even if only for a little while, I need to pause and reflect.  I “know”, at some level, that I must remain mindful of my limits.  I tend to ignore them and try to forget that I even have limits.  Running headlong into walls has been a consistent pattern in a largely inconsistent life.  Woe unto any friend or lover who steps into the path of this red-headed whirlwind to remind me that I should take a break, that I ought to take a little time for myself. 

  
  

  What?!?   If I bother to respond at all, it’s usually a scornful, “whaddaya mean?” tossed over my shoulder as I move on to the next crisis that has grabbed my attention, the next job crying out for a volunteer to get it done.  Just try taking care of me, and you end up eating my dust… until I slam into that wall and lie there whimpering, needing someone to pick me up, dust me off, and help me limp over to the easy chair.

  
  

  Here in the far north, we are manic-depressive by nature.  Summer days run together.  If you aren’t paying attention, the sun goes down and comes back up before you know it and suddenly it has become the next day, and… what happened to last night?  Manic activity is the order of the day. 

  
  

  Six months from now, on the flipside of the solar year, we awaken when the house begins to chill, toss some more wood in the stove and crawl under the covers again.  If one isn’t mindful, the brief winter days can slip by unnoticed, just as do the summer nights.  That engenders somewhat similar bursts of frantic activity, but they are much shorter and involve more clothing, usually, as we pile on the layers of insulation to get out there and split more wood before dark.  But that comes later, much later, and I don’t have time to dwell on it right now.

  
  

  Greyfox is familiar with my patterns.  His own behavior has similar patterns, only where my relapses involve the sensorimotor deficits and various debilitating manifestations of my autoimmune syndrome, his crashes involve drug binges.  It was lucky for both of us that when his money-and-work crisis a few weeks ago brought him down, I was in an up cycle and could help him pick up the pieces.  It is very lucky for me that his recent spiritual awakening entailed a boost of courage so that he braved the storm and reminded me that I ought to slow down before I hit another wall.

  
  

  My first reaction was the usual:  resentment that he–that anyone–would try and tell me what to do.  One sure way to push my buttons is to throw a word like ought or should at me.  But I’ve been experiencing some spiritual awakening of my own lately, and a day or two after his first warning, I started noticing that I was needing to hang onto furniture to cross a room.  When difficulty speaking finally penetrated my awareness, I realized that this had been going on for a few days.   Funny how the brain fog tends to obscure its own presence.

  
  

  So… I’ve committed myself to staying home a few days, working on some necessary but relatively non-demanding tasks, things I can do at the keyboard or worktable.  The small muscles in my hands don’t fatigue as quickly as the big ones in my legs.  When I get enough sleep, the brain fog will clear away, I know.  I have been running on about five hours sleep a day, and that’s not enough to clear the fatigue chemicals.  Meals have been catch-as-catch-can, and eating away from home means risking ingesting things my body can’t handle.  For the next few days at least, it is back to clean water and good food for me, and extra hours in the sack.

  
  

  As I have been reminding my clients for years, if I don’t take care of myself, I won’t be able to take care of anyone else.

  
  

  

  • 2:42 pm
  • 8 Comments