October 17, 2005

• stupid or brilliant or both

  You know that you know too much about psychology when you start feeling
  bad about feeling bad.  I understand that there is no benefit in
  beating up on myself for a lapse in judgement or failure to maintain
  mindfulness.  I know that.  But some of my lapses are so
  egregious and the pain I experience for them is so great that I just
  naturally beat up on myself about it, and when I notice what’s going on
  I end up beating myself up over beating on myself in an endless
  feedback loop.

  I spent too much time yesterday trying to decide whether I had been
  stupid to cause the current problem, or brilliant for having discovered
  and corrected it.  I know that in the Cosmic scheme of things none
  of that matters.  That’s just the way my stupid brilliant mind
  works.  Now that I have beaten myself bloody over hurting myself,
  and then sprained my shoulder patting myself on the back for having
  stopped hurting myself, I’ll tell you how it all came about.

  Y’see, I have this neuromuscular disorder, myalgic encephalomyelopathy/chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome. (Miashineon
  asked what ME/CFIDS stands for.  That’s it.)  One of its
  defining characteristics is that symptoms come and go.  Weakness,
  incoordination and pain occur somewhere in my body every day and shift
  around from place to place apparently at random, except when I do
  something to stress or fatigue a particular body part.  When I do
  that, the body part involved becomes especially weak, stiff,
  uncoordinated and sore, becoming the dominant note in my ongoing
  symphony of dysfunction.

  Last week it was my neck.  I was having trouble holding my head
  up.  I spent a lot of time with my elbow on the desk and my chin
  propped on my fist.  My shoulders and upper arms grew fatigued,
  sore, and gimpy from holding books up so I could read while resting my
  head on pillows.  For days, I thought it was just more of that old
  familiar randomness.  This shit has been going on since I was in
  school.  I remember getting in trouble for laying my head on my
  desk while I listened to the lectures.  Good grades weren’t
  enough.  Eye contact was required.

  This time, it just kept getting worse.  Then, yesterday morning I
  tried to turn my head and simply couldn’t.  The muscles were too
  weak to overcome the resistance… resistance?!?  What was
  resisting?  Shirts:  a turtleneck sweater under a high-necked
  henley, had my head and neck immobilized.  It was absurd, and
  absurdly obvious.  There have been enough times when my bedcovers
  have held me captive that I am accustomed to the idea of being
  powerless against fabric.

  I fought my way out of the shirts with more than a little bit of
  difficulty, and put on an open-necked shirt under a loose and bulky
  boat-neck sweater.  They are just as warm as the previous
  arrangement, my head is free to swivel, and my neck is gradually losing
  its soreness.  While I was arguing with myself yesterday over
  whether I had been stupid to dress that way or brilliant to figure out
  that the clothes were causing the problem, I did come up with one
  little excuse for the prolonged stupidity:  the turtleneck had
  been cutting off the circulation to my brain.

  P.S.  Dawning light has revealed… snow.  It’s sticking and
  still falling, and I haven’t gotten my winter tires put on my car
  yet.  I miss summer:  the long hours of daylight, the warmth,
  the birds.  Geese and swans have gone south.  I’ve got the
  old migratory urge.  Time to switch from bird mode to bear mode
  and hibernate, I guess.
  

  Doug is playing, and singing along with the theme song on:

  • 12:42 pm
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