Dear Diary.
Yesterday was kind of a shit day. Or to put a positive spin on it, as I like to do, it was a do-nothing relaxing day? Except it really wasn’t. I don’t feel mentally good when I am not accomplishing things. Why am I not accomplishing things? Well here are my excuses.
I live every day with chronic pain. That being said, in general, I do not use it as any sort of excuse for not doing things. I will hurt whether I do things or I don’t. So I may as well do them. Because at the very least my mental health will be all the better for it. But there are some days where I’m feeling like the person that just spent hours walking around Costco pushing a giant cart of crap around and when you’ve finally filled your car up with that crap you look at the cart and the distance to the cart return and you think…. “NOT ANOTHER STEP!” (By the by, I would never do that. Who does that? How hard is it to just put the damn cart in the return? I give zero flupps how tired you are. That’s your own damn fault. 🙄😂 )
Yesterday I woke up with a migraine. You know, the kind where your head feels like it’s a grape that an elephant has got it’s foot on and it’s just about to pop into a flat puddle of goo? Yeah, that. And you’re nauseous to boot. I know, I know, just take a pill or something. We are not even going to go into how pharmaceuticals and my body do not play well. I had a physician once tell me that I should NEVER do clinical trials. Because I will mess them all up. At any rate, I have a ritual for this type of scenario. 1) water, 2) stretching, yoga, spinal rotations 3) Caffeine (which can be difficult when feeling nauseous) 4) Shower, alternating cold and hot water over the top of my head…. which is difficult because the damn tap is at the other end of the tub. When none of this works, I grab some Tylenol and maybe put some topical 50/50 THC, CBD cream across the back of my neck, base of the skull. For all those who know… over the AO joint area. And then I go back to bed.
Going back to bed seems great, yeah? No. No it isn’t. See, my body doesn’t particularly care for bed. People who can sleep in, I envy you. But my body wants to move. It is not down for this staying-in-bed crap. And it screams from all of my various chronically painful areas “for the love of all that is Holy in the universe…. GET UP!” I’ve had partners totally annoyed that I will get up and start cleaning the house after having morning sex. MUST MOVE. MUST ACCOMPLISH THINGS!
So anyway… back to yesterday. I got up. Drank water. Normally this is where I would do the dishes… but migraine. So I made the coffee and did the stretching. Attempted to start my writing practice again. The pain in my head eventually began to wane at about 10:30 am (I got up at 4:30). But here’s the thing. I’ve been in a chronic pain flare-up for the past week. People who know me well can tell you, most of the time when I’m in pain they don’t know I’m in pain. I don’t talk about it or bitch and complain about it. I do make a lot of off-handed jokes. But, I do stuff. Everyday. I go to work, clean, cook, and work on hobbies. Etc. But if I go to bed and cry… it’s bad. And no one knows about that either. Except for you. Now you know. Thursday and Friday nights were go to bed and cry nights. Anyone who navigates chronic pain can tell you that it is emotionally and mentally exhausting. And with my ADHD, my brain is looking for anything and everything to distract me. Which makes focusing on work a pain in the ass. And the more pain I’m in the more things I forget. Like feeding the dog or taking my supplements. (Some of which are super important to help with my ADHD).
Anyways… yesterday was a bust. No migraine this morning. There is something niggling at me just behind the temples, but nothing major. I got up this morning and tried to take the dog for an actual walk. She is old too and we don’t go walking like we used to and that’s a problem. For me and for her. I keep looking for a partner that will walk with me. People always say they love walking. just love love love it. Love hiking. Bullshit. BULLSHIT, I say. Because they never ever ever ever go walking with me. Anywho, at 5:30 in the morning, in the blessed dark and silence of the chilly morning, We went on a walk. Sure, Bella sat in the shoulder bag the whole way, but we walked around the block. Which is the equivalent of walking around 3 or 4 blocks because we aren’t sectioned out like that here. Half of the walk is uphill. Really really uphill. I live on the top of quite a hill. And I realize how out of shape I am because the walk was gloriously difficult. I’m embarrassed and not embarrassed to say that. And now I need to do that every damn morning. Except at 4:30 am so that I can have time to do the other things I do in the morning. I’m awake then anyway, so why not?
Today is folding and putting away the towels day. My knees are complaining loudly so they are getting creamed because I also want to hang some Christmas lights. I wonder if I can make them into our house numbers since you can’t really see the house numbers on the house and the house numbers we put on the corner at the end of the driveway are blocked by my housemate parking there. People are up and moving now in the house, so solitude is broken. No more writing for me. The focus is kaput. It’s time to feed the dog anyway.
Justmemyownself 