Through The Valley

Yesterday was hard. Yesterday you didn't have a lot of energy, and all of it was spent on one small chore outside the house. But maybe today will be different.

You wake up in the morning. For a little bit, you feel alive and like today might be different. You shower, you get dressed, you brush your teeth. You have a class this evening, so you only choose one chore this afternoon so you can conserve energy.

You make a simple, protein heavy lunch. The stir-fry is a bit experimental today, but palatable. There's enough left over for tomorrow.

There's about five or six art pieces in the final stages of wrapping. You've been working on wrapping all 25 pieces for this whole month in preparation for a move, and there's only these left. You remove a couple pieces of housing material in the way, then get going.

You listen to politics. You listen to neuroplastic symptom podcasts. You wonder if that's what your problem is, and if you should be working in that direction. You decide you're already stacking enough attempts to figure out the problem for this time period, adding more will just confuse the results if you start getting better.

You're tired. That didn't take long. You retreat to the bedroom where you've set up a nest: a beanbag with a heating blanket, heating pad, candles, medication, water, Switch, laptop, and Kindle all in easy reach. You go there when your energy bottoms out, because you don't know how else to tell your nervous system that you're really safe and that it's okay to stop straining so hard.

You hope you have enough time to recover before class tonight. It's ceramics class. You really want to go, it helps you.

You lay there as misery creeps through your bones. They feel leached of vitality. Your brain burns for sleep even though, according to the clock, you got plenty. You shift around until you're able to drift a little, but you're not deep enough for real sleep. You stay in the upper layers of unconsciousness, cycling endlessly on the feeling of fatigue. On negative future fantasies of what this means if it never goes away.

You think about how much weight you're gaining because you don't have the energy to work out. You fought so damn hard to come down, and now you're incrementally slipping backwards.

You think about the surfaces in the house that are collecting grime and filth because you just can't, even though you could before.

You wonder if you've packed enough, or what packed enough looks like, or what you even do next when you're getting a house ready for a move.

Your brain flips through things you need to do, then catastrophizes about not having the energy to do them.

You wake, emotionally miserable, but a little bit less tired. Everything in you wants to stay in the beanbag, but ceramics class is healing and you need to get out and create.

In the car, on the way there, you cry.

The first hour of class, you work with shards of glass in your heart. By the second hour, you're focused enough on the clay that you aren't hurting.

In the car, on the way home, you cry. You wail that you don't want to be like this, that you want to be relied on, that you want to be responsible but you can't be.

You pick up a few snacks from the grocery store. Sometimes sugar has stabilized really bad spirals, so you try a few bites of a candy bar and some cocoa-yogurt with honey.

It's well into the night. You go back to your nest, start watching an anime, and pause to start sobbing again, because the bone-deep exhaustion is still there and hasn't left since it set in this afternoon.

You don't know what is wrong with you. You don't know why your energy comes and goes, why some days it's like you're almost normal, and others you're lucky if you can get one thing done. You know it's not your fault that you collapsed, but it's impossible to escape feeling like it is your failure, your weakness.

You don't even know what you want. If someone asked you how they could help, you wouldn't know what to tell them. Parts of your identity are collapsing and haven't yet rebuilt. Your plans for the future are completely in shambles. Your health is a giant question mark. Every day is a different level of ability and you can't seem to stop trying to go full throttle.

The storm passes. You take some Sudafed because at this point you've primed yourself for trouble breathing while you sleep. You take some hydroxyzine for sleep. You think back on the meds you took earlier to deal with other physical issues, and wonder how you got to three supplements, two daily prescriptions, and an emergency prescription.

It's close to midnight by the time your calm and energy feel like they return to normal. It feels like a gift and a slap in the face at the same time.

You cycle between dissecting your thoughts with ChatGPT, watching anime, and writing, because you don't know how to be. You don't know how to rest without having earned it, without guilt.

You are walking through a valley. It is long and dark. Everything is shifting under your feet. You know you'll survive. You know there's a plan.

You just can't see anything in this darkness yet.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23: 4