I was going to have a break from writing here, where barely anyone reads anyway (except for those of you who do, who I like very much). Sometimes blogging feels like a luxury and I feel like I should turn my energy towards something more worthwhile, like some half-written essays that are collecting a bit of dust on them, being written by hand and then left in piles on the floor or on tables. I'm feeling encouraged to return to essay writing (I love her so) after a big morsel of recent encouragement from Creative Nonfiction, who think they might have possibly found space for a piece I submitted something like nine months ago and while they understand that someone else might pick it up in the meantime (being a classy and understanding unit that accepts simultaneous submissions) could they hang onto it for a bit longer? Well, I figure another few months isn't going to make much of a difference, and I understand the difficulties that come with being a small enterprise having to plough through submissions from the world over. So while I understand and yet feel frustrated, I also feel heartened that a journal I love is considering putting some of my words inside it. Even though payment won't extend to me being able to compost some of it back into a new subscription because I'm so bloody broke.
Sigh. Money. I'll repeat here my mantra that money is meant to be a tool and a device that allows us to share our stuff amongst each other. While there are lovely cinnamon-smelling whiffs of people doing it differently, money has on the whole become something that keeps us slogging and slugging and serving the machine instead. This HAS to change - and it will. The most surprising thing is that so little has changed half a decade after the GFC, except in pockets of sanity like Iceland, and even then that's not a systemic change but a facing of damage done.
Gazing into my crystal ball of future trends, I'll say expect to see more and more discussion over the next months and years about interest (or usury as it used to be called in the days where it was widely recognized as a great and destructive evil) and the concept of demurrage, which is something I'm still getting my head around but which basically is an element inserted into the economic system which would mean that the longer you hang onto money the more you lose because it will lose some of its value, so that hoarding it ends up becoming a ridiculous concept. Which means that money again would become something that is meant to flow, not something some of us hang onto in a bid for security, and just this one thing would change so, so, so, so, so much. We would begin resembling again the gift economics of the past and less the beholden and enslaved populace we are now.
~
I began panicking a little yesterday morning because when I woke up, I felt simply awful. I felt like the sinusitis that's plagued me over the last year was making another return. Congested head, dizzy, nauseous. Buddhism talks about learning to face the things we are averse to, that cause a strong reaction of disgust within us. I struggled with this aversion yesterday morning because I have had four weeks where I have begun to have a bit more energy, and where I have actually felt happy, and where my creative juices have begun dripping all over the floor. To have to return to this small and ugly area was not something that I was savouring in the least.
So I tried to work with it. I didn't want to be there, but instead of being averse I tried to embrace it. Which meant going back to bed. I surrounded myself with my phone, with some books, and with some paper and pen, and I wrote a complaining blog post, and I began putting my meandering thoughts down for a competition I've been meaning to begin exploring for a while. And eventually, the aversion felt like it loosened its grip a little. I even felt happy while feeling awful. And so I chilled, drank lots of neem tea, flushed my sinuses with a xylitol rinse, and got through the day. It was not where I wanted to be, but I managed to chillax with where I was. I was very pleased.
I'm feeling so much better today than yesterday, but still weak. But what felt like the beginnings of a full-blown sinus infection I think may have simply been a strong reaction to the smoke haze that hung like curtains all over the place yesterday from several fires on the outskirts of northern Melbourne, most of which have been deliberately lit by people who really need to get a handle on whatever shit they're projecting onto a bunch of innocent animals.
I struggle so much with feeling so vulnerable with a body that does not work properly. It really is a vulnerable position to be in. And yet I keep reminding myself that vulnerabilities can also be strengths. They help us stay open, and compassionate, and understanding of others who feel the same way. They slow us down in certain areas, which may be exactly what other parts of us are screaming for. I guess it's all in the way you get to look at it, if your anxiety levels will distil enough to let you see the sandbars.
Showing posts with label emotional health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotional health. Show all posts
I've been taking pyroluria supplements for about eight months now. For a few months before that I was taking B6/zinc in pyroluria-sized doses. So have I noticed an improvement in my health in that time?
Well, I wish it was that simple. When it comes to health issues, sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. And I think that's what's going on with me.
If pyroluria existed in one compartment of my body and affected no other parts, and if taking supplements meant that I simply fast-tracked from point P to point A, then I would be able to have a much clearer indication of where I'm at and what's going on. But sometimes getting your body to do what it needs to do can create some extra problems along the way.
I know from hair mineral analysis and by my doctor's assessment respectively that I am a slow oxidiser and an undermethylator. This means that my body has accumulated a whole lot of gunk in its travels that it's been unable to get rid of through the proper detoxification channels. This is why I need to do extra things like have saunas and coffee enemas to help it along. It's why my body has sequestered away in its tissues certain things like copper because it didn't know what else to do with them. Better to shove them away in a room wherer you can close the door than let them float around in your system doing constant damage.
The problem with the process of taking stuff that my body needs to function better is that it begins opening up all those doors where it shunted things away in years gone by and it begins doing some spring cleaning. But the spring cleaning can happen too fast, and if your body struggles to get rid of it of all of this vacuumed-up stuff, like mine does, then it can tend to recirculate in your body. Not nice. All of this spring cleaning has put extra pressure on my kidneys, my adrenal glands, and suddenly I find myself back in the land of adrenal fatigue and pending sickness benefits. So I am suspecting that maybe I got too excited about spring cleaning and went too fast. But you sometimes don't know these things except in hindsight.
When my doctor told me that it can take undermethylators up to two years to get right, I didn't really want to hear that news. But it turns out that I think she may just well be right. Time to climb up onto that Zen ledge, the one that sits above the raging waters of loss and frustration, and watch my emotions and frustrations pass. Things are as they are. There are ways of finding peace no matter what situation you are in. You just have to stop believing that commonly-held idea that a bad situation means no peace to be found. It's not true. It's just hard to get there. Impossible if you don't believe you can.
Adrenal fatigue is a true shocker ~ you can't really know how unsafe and vulnerable a body can feel until you're stuck in one that's lost its muffler a few corners back. Makes it harder ~ but not impossible - to lean into the curves and ride it out.
Knowing why this is happening is helpful. Doing what I need to help my adrenal glands heal again is a long process ~ a full-time job all its own. And knowing that I am on the right track is comforting, even while it feels like it's flung me backwards into the saltbush.
Well, I wish it was that simple. When it comes to health issues, sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. And I think that's what's going on with me.
If pyroluria existed in one compartment of my body and affected no other parts, and if taking supplements meant that I simply fast-tracked from point P to point A, then I would be able to have a much clearer indication of where I'm at and what's going on. But sometimes getting your body to do what it needs to do can create some extra problems along the way.
I know from hair mineral analysis and by my doctor's assessment respectively that I am a slow oxidiser and an undermethylator. This means that my body has accumulated a whole lot of gunk in its travels that it's been unable to get rid of through the proper detoxification channels. This is why I need to do extra things like have saunas and coffee enemas to help it along. It's why my body has sequestered away in its tissues certain things like copper because it didn't know what else to do with them. Better to shove them away in a room wherer you can close the door than let them float around in your system doing constant damage.
The problem with the process of taking stuff that my body needs to function better is that it begins opening up all those doors where it shunted things away in years gone by and it begins doing some spring cleaning. But the spring cleaning can happen too fast, and if your body struggles to get rid of it of all of this vacuumed-up stuff, like mine does, then it can tend to recirculate in your body. Not nice. All of this spring cleaning has put extra pressure on my kidneys, my adrenal glands, and suddenly I find myself back in the land of adrenal fatigue and pending sickness benefits. So I am suspecting that maybe I got too excited about spring cleaning and went too fast. But you sometimes don't know these things except in hindsight.
When my doctor told me that it can take undermethylators up to two years to get right, I didn't really want to hear that news. But it turns out that I think she may just well be right. Time to climb up onto that Zen ledge, the one that sits above the raging waters of loss and frustration, and watch my emotions and frustrations pass. Things are as they are. There are ways of finding peace no matter what situation you are in. You just have to stop believing that commonly-held idea that a bad situation means no peace to be found. It's not true. It's just hard to get there. Impossible if you don't believe you can.
Adrenal fatigue is a true shocker ~ you can't really know how unsafe and vulnerable a body can feel until you're stuck in one that's lost its muffler a few corners back. Makes it harder ~ but not impossible - to lean into the curves and ride it out.
Knowing why this is happening is helpful. Doing what I need to help my adrenal glands heal again is a long process ~ a full-time job all its own. And knowing that I am on the right track is comforting, even while it feels like it's flung me backwards into the saltbush.
 |
| Messing about with clay - one of the things I need to return to to help my body heal itself. |
Update June 2013: My pyroluria supplementation has changed rather drastically since I wrote this post. These days I am taking 50mg of zinc at night and 100mg of P5P in the morning, amongst many other things. Every single body is different, and within every body are variances that make what is right for you at one time wrong for you in another. It's a complicated process of trial and error finding out what suits you, that's for sure. And as at September 2013 I have dropped my P5P back to 50mg.
~ ~
I have been taking supplements ever since my pyroluria diagnosis back in August. Actually, I began supplementing even before I got the official diagnosis because I just knew that I had pyroluria. I guess my strong knowing might have something to do with the fact that when my treating GP looked over my completed questionnaire she said she'd never had anyone tick so many boxes before. I am, it seems, a pyroluria poster child.
(Which is nice, because I just thought I was a stuff-up).
I wonder, what would a poster look like for a pyroluric? Black and white. Lots of shadows. Introspective and solitudinal gazing out of windows onto snow-filled landscapes. Something along those lines :)
Give or take, it's been six months of 100 mg of zinc a day and about 750mg of B6 and about 130mg of P5P (the other form of B6) along with other bits and pieces that we sussed out after the blood tests*. Those are tailored for me though and are very high. Anyone who is beginning supplementation needs to start at a low level and build up because your body needs time to adjust. Also, taking these things your body needs so much signals it to begin detoxifying from the high levels of copper you could very possibly be suffering under, and getting rid of copper can be a little traumatic. Best approached as slowly as possible.
I would recommend that anybody who is able to, find a practitioner versed in the Walsh/Pfeiffer protocols to help them along. Don't count on your regular GP knowing anything about it. At all. And, as amazingly arrogant as it all is, if they don't know what pyroluria is, don't expect them to do some research to find out. Many GPs seem unable to resist taking the route of making their patient feel bad about trying to find solutions to their health problems that they don't happen to know anything about. Bizarre and frustratingly arrogant, but true.
If you are in Australia, a good place to start is with the practitioners who practise under the Bio-Balance umbrella. (They also have practitioners in Singapore, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Ireland and Norway). Initial consultation can be expensive. Having your supplements compounded is an expensive outlay, but then you're right for months on end. As an indication, it cost me about $500 for testing and consultation, and then another $300 for three months' supply of compounded supplements.
Being sick is expensive. It breaks my heart.
If you are having problems finding anyone that can treat you, or if you have come up against complications in your treatment and are a Facebook user, can I recommend the Pyroluria group. I am a member, and there are a stack of good-hearted people there who will help you find your way.
The level of B6 I'm taking is apparently a bit controversial. My treating doctor, Joanna Hickey at Wellness Medicine in Clifton Hill, who has trained under William Walsh (who, along with Carl Pfeiffer is one of the gurus of pyroluria treatment) has said she can't officially agree to me taking so much B6 because of the risk of nerve damage (neuropathy). But I know my body needs more. I can remember only a fragment of my dream last night, and that's on the crazy dose I'm already on.
I got a bit scared off about the high B6 when I first started seeing Joanna, and so I cut my B6 dosage right back. But the distinction between the menstrual period I had before cutting it back and the one I had afterwards couldn't have been more marked and indicative. The first period was a breeze. Barely any period pain at all, and no sore boobs beforehand. A bit of PMS (but then it's hard to define PMS when I have mood fluctuations for 31 days of the month anyway :) The next menstrual cycle after I dropped the B6 had all of those symptoms return and greater levels of PMS to boot. I have now since upped my levels again and monitor myself for neuropathy.
However, a doctor in the US who has trained under Carl Pfeiffer reports that he regularly treats his patients with a B6/P5P combination of up to 2000mg without problems. According to him the neuropathy is decreased when using P5P. I am also taking niacin (B3) which also helps prevent neuropathy. So I guess I am going to trust my body on this one.
I am an undermethylator, which means that my body is not easily able to get rid of toxins. I know this. In my years with CFS (and especially after antibiotic therapy to treat infections) I often felt "toxic". I still do. It's a system-wide malaise and it is frustrating because you feel so bad, but there is nothing you can definitely say that is "wrong" with you. (Just everything. Like a system-wide computer virus). I have often wished for a broken arm so that people could see how bad I was feeling. A cancer diagnosis would have got me more sympathy. But CFS? Being a walking too-hard basket makes anybody uncomfortable. A pyroluria diagnosis (along with an understanding of how fragile my adrenal glands are) is freakin' fantastic by comparison.
According to Joanna Hickey it can take up to a year for the methylation cycle to work properly once you start treating pyroluria. In that regard I can say that I am feeling so much better than I was. I really do feel like my body is starting to clear itself. I have been trying to detoxify my body in one way or another, intuiting that something was wrong, for so many years now.
As for stress, I still feel at times like I best resemble a paper bag. Too much stress (that other people wouldn't even notice) and I crumple, and then I melt down, and it's a horrible and lonely and deadening experience. However, last week I had a stressful experience with a new client, and after hanging up the phone I could feel that familiar meltdown feeling heading my way. But this time, with deep breathing and a good kind talking-to, I was able to head it off at the pass and move on with my day, though a little shaky. But it beats having to go and lie down for a couple of hours till everything stops feeling overwhelming.
As for energy, my levels are improving. I had an adrenal fatigue situation a year and a half ago, and it's taken me forever to climb back out of that space. An understanding of how much stress your system is under living with pyroluria provides an understanding as to just how depleted your adrenal glands probably are. I've found some real gains using withania and other herbs but again, rebuilding adrenals is not a quick fix. Still, I am appreciating how much easier life is when those little walnut-sized glands that sit atop my kidneys are able to function properly. It's hell when they don't. But I have been gardening and exercising and stuff lately, and while most nights find me collapsed on the couch with a desire to do things that my body doesn't tend to possess, I have some hope that that is changing.
I feel like my ship is being strengthened. It's such a long and slow process that often it feels like nothing is happening and nothing is ever going to change. I guess that after living on a ship that for 30 years has had some serious rickety factors, a strong and steady constitution takes a while to rebuild. And not just on the physical level. That stressful physiology has created some mountainous terrain that needs ironing out. The combination of supplementation on the physical level along with a truly badass therapist on the other is causing me to believe that even though I can't see it, and it feels too good to be true, that a whole lot more peace and ease are coming my way. I do admit I find it hard to believe, but I do believe that thought feels pretty damn good.
If you are ordering supplements, may I recommend Iherb.com? Even including costs associated with ordering from the US to Australia, they are still the cheapest place to order online. New customers can receive $5-$10 off their first order by quoting a current customer's gift code. If you quote mine - ZEY804 - when you are checking out on your first order in the "Apply Coupon Code" section I will receive a discount of $5-$10 off my next order as well - and I can tell you, this broke writer would very much appreciate the extra help :)
~ ~
I have been taking supplements ever since my pyroluria diagnosis back in August. Actually, I began supplementing even before I got the official diagnosis because I just knew that I had pyroluria. I guess my strong knowing might have something to do with the fact that when my treating GP looked over my completed questionnaire she said she'd never had anyone tick so many boxes before. I am, it seems, a pyroluria poster child.
(Which is nice, because I just thought I was a stuff-up).
I wonder, what would a poster look like for a pyroluric? Black and white. Lots of shadows. Introspective and solitudinal gazing out of windows onto snow-filled landscapes. Something along those lines :)
Give or take, it's been six months of 100 mg of zinc a day and about 750mg of B6 and about 130mg of P5P (the other form of B6) along with other bits and pieces that we sussed out after the blood tests*. Those are tailored for me though and are very high. Anyone who is beginning supplementation needs to start at a low level and build up because your body needs time to adjust. Also, taking these things your body needs so much signals it to begin detoxifying from the high levels of copper you could very possibly be suffering under, and getting rid of copper can be a little traumatic. Best approached as slowly as possible.
I would recommend that anybody who is able to, find a practitioner versed in the Walsh/Pfeiffer protocols to help them along. Don't count on your regular GP knowing anything about it. At all. And, as amazingly arrogant as it all is, if they don't know what pyroluria is, don't expect them to do some research to find out. Many GPs seem unable to resist taking the route of making their patient feel bad about trying to find solutions to their health problems that they don't happen to know anything about. Bizarre and frustratingly arrogant, but true.
If you are in Australia, a good place to start is with the practitioners who practise under the Bio-Balance umbrella. (They also have practitioners in Singapore, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Ireland and Norway). Initial consultation can be expensive. Having your supplements compounded is an expensive outlay, but then you're right for months on end. As an indication, it cost me about $500 for testing and consultation, and then another $300 for three months' supply of compounded supplements.
Being sick is expensive. It breaks my heart.
If you are having problems finding anyone that can treat you, or if you have come up against complications in your treatment and are a Facebook user, can I recommend the Pyroluria group. I am a member, and there are a stack of good-hearted people there who will help you find your way.
The level of B6 I'm taking is apparently a bit controversial. My treating doctor, Joanna Hickey at Wellness Medicine in Clifton Hill, who has trained under William Walsh (who, along with Carl Pfeiffer is one of the gurus of pyroluria treatment) has said she can't officially agree to me taking so much B6 because of the risk of nerve damage (neuropathy). But I know my body needs more. I can remember only a fragment of my dream last night, and that's on the crazy dose I'm already on.
I got a bit scared off about the high B6 when I first started seeing Joanna, and so I cut my B6 dosage right back. But the distinction between the menstrual period I had before cutting it back and the one I had afterwards couldn't have been more marked and indicative. The first period was a breeze. Barely any period pain at all, and no sore boobs beforehand. A bit of PMS (but then it's hard to define PMS when I have mood fluctuations for 31 days of the month anyway :) The next menstrual cycle after I dropped the B6 had all of those symptoms return and greater levels of PMS to boot. I have now since upped my levels again and monitor myself for neuropathy.
However, a doctor in the US who has trained under Carl Pfeiffer reports that he regularly treats his patients with a B6/P5P combination of up to 2000mg without problems. According to him the neuropathy is decreased when using P5P. I am also taking niacin (B3) which also helps prevent neuropathy. So I guess I am going to trust my body on this one.
I am an undermethylator, which means that my body is not easily able to get rid of toxins. I know this. In my years with CFS (and especially after antibiotic therapy to treat infections) I often felt "toxic". I still do. It's a system-wide malaise and it is frustrating because you feel so bad, but there is nothing you can definitely say that is "wrong" with you. (Just everything. Like a system-wide computer virus). I have often wished for a broken arm so that people could see how bad I was feeling. A cancer diagnosis would have got me more sympathy. But CFS? Being a walking too-hard basket makes anybody uncomfortable. A pyroluria diagnosis (along with an understanding of how fragile my adrenal glands are) is freakin' fantastic by comparison.
According to Joanna Hickey it can take up to a year for the methylation cycle to work properly once you start treating pyroluria. In that regard I can say that I am feeling so much better than I was. I really do feel like my body is starting to clear itself. I have been trying to detoxify my body in one way or another, intuiting that something was wrong, for so many years now.
As for stress, I still feel at times like I best resemble a paper bag. Too much stress (that other people wouldn't even notice) and I crumple, and then I melt down, and it's a horrible and lonely and deadening experience. However, last week I had a stressful experience with a new client, and after hanging up the phone I could feel that familiar meltdown feeling heading my way. But this time, with deep breathing and a good kind talking-to, I was able to head it off at the pass and move on with my day, though a little shaky. But it beats having to go and lie down for a couple of hours till everything stops feeling overwhelming.
As for energy, my levels are improving. I had an adrenal fatigue situation a year and a half ago, and it's taken me forever to climb back out of that space. An understanding of how much stress your system is under living with pyroluria provides an understanding as to just how depleted your adrenal glands probably are. I've found some real gains using withania and other herbs but again, rebuilding adrenals is not a quick fix. Still, I am appreciating how much easier life is when those little walnut-sized glands that sit atop my kidneys are able to function properly. It's hell when they don't. But I have been gardening and exercising and stuff lately, and while most nights find me collapsed on the couch with a desire to do things that my body doesn't tend to possess, I have some hope that that is changing.
I feel like my ship is being strengthened. It's such a long and slow process that often it feels like nothing is happening and nothing is ever going to change. I guess that after living on a ship that for 30 years has had some serious rickety factors, a strong and steady constitution takes a while to rebuild. And not just on the physical level. That stressful physiology has created some mountainous terrain that needs ironing out. The combination of supplementation on the physical level along with a truly badass therapist on the other is causing me to believe that even though I can't see it, and it feels too good to be true, that a whole lot more peace and ease are coming my way. I do admit I find it hard to believe, but I do believe that thought feels pretty damn good.
If you are ordering supplements, may I recommend Iherb.com? Even including costs associated with ordering from the US to Australia, they are still the cheapest place to order online. New customers can receive $5-$10 off their first order by quoting a current customer's gift code. If you quote mine - ZEY804 - when you are checking out on your first order in the "Apply Coupon Code" section I will receive a discount of $5-$10 off my next order as well - and I can tell you, this broke writer would very much appreciate the extra help :)
What a strange and bipolar health fortnight.
This is the good side:
The Friday afternoon before last, I was sitting in bed in a last-ditch effort to try to study. I'd failed dismally so far, sitting in front of the computer and trying to make sense of the assigned readings while being distracted every three and a half seconds by something other than the assigned readings. Earlier in the day I had given in to tears in pure abject frustration. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't seem to focus on the words in front of me long enough for them to sink in. I was already getting behind in my studies, and it was only week 2 of the trimester.
Then my partner came home with the envelope which contained the test results that said that I have a condition called pyroluria. Even though I had strongly suspected it, it was still a surprise. Pyroluria is a condition where the haemoglobin in the blood produces too much of a particular substance called kryptopyrroles. This substance binds to vitamin B6 and the mineral zinc, and so when the body excretes the excess, it rather unfortunately takes those substances with it. And so I find out that I am uber-deficient in those two things. Unsurprisingly, both are used to treat ADHD. Unsurprisingly, people with pyroluria can't handle stress. That'll be me, sequestered away from the world for years on end while I try and deal with why my body is so fatigued, so depressed, so anxious, why I just can't bloody cope. I think I have the answer.
And so slowly over the past two weeks I have built up my levels of B6 and zinc. I am taking five times the daily recommended amount of B6, and I know it's still not enough (apparently the way to measure when you are having enough is regular dream recall. Not even close to that yet). And I am starting to notice a difference. The B6 in the morning and the afternoon is giving me this lovely energy. Oh, it's nothing normal people would be able to notice. But for me, there is this new stability I am feeling in my body, an understanding that a piece that has been missing for a couple of decades has now been put in place. I can only imagine this energy will continue increasing. The zinc at night (three times the recommended daily dosage) is helping me sleep. I am getting so tired at night some nights that I could go to sleep at 10 pm if I needed to. I can count on one hand the success I have had in managing to get to sleep at 10 pm over the years. It would be amazing if I could.
~ * ~
This is the bad side:
I have high levels of copper. I first suspected it over seven months ago when I did a home heavy metals test. The resulting symptoms when I tried treating the high copper were enough to convince me that (a) this is something of what schizophrenia feels like, and it's hell; and (b) though I was only a quarter of the way through the bottle that would help get rid of this excess metal from my body, this was as far as I was able to go with it. There was something else that needed to give. There was something missing which was making this attempt impossible.
Hence trying the test for pyroluria. Hooray for intuition - I stand in awe at the powers of intuition I have developed about my own body, because I was right, and a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces are starting to fit. B6 and zinc both displace high copper levels in the body. These levels have become high in the first place because of the lack of those two substances in circulation. And so the blood, in its wisdom, noticing these high levels of copper circulating within it, began the task of secretion. If it can't get rid of the copper in any other way, it will hide it away. And so it does - in the liver, in the brain, in the lungs, in the kidneys.
And so now I have begun reinstalling B6 and zinc, my body is taking the opportunity to get rid of the copper, now that it finally has the chance. And so out it comes, from where it's been hiding all these years, back into my bloodstream, and if I don't have a sauna, or shoot coffee up my arse (I never did make any pretensions to this blog post being romantic), then I begin to feel those hellish symptoms again. Like yesterday, when I didn't have time for a sauna or to shoot coffee up me bum. I am still trying to find workarounds for the emotional symptoms. There are certain supplements which help in the detoxing process (and certain other ones I am taking, such as chlorella), but it's a process of working out what works best.
When I feel like this, I feel in hell. Last night, my partner quietly but forcefully said to me, "I need you to stop talking now." I hadn't realised that I was raving, but apparently I was. But his comment came out of the blue, and I'm a fragile soul, and so it wouldn't have mattered how he said it, I still would have broken into 1037 pieces of glass.
Because it's such a weird dreamscape from here, when I am feeling like this. The only way I can identify that what I am feeling is spilling over into the outside world is when feedback like this happens. And then I think of other people I know who I suspect have high copper levels, and how they sometimes have a tendency to go on and on about certain topics until I'm exhausted. And so suddenly I realised last night that that was me, and that was how I was being.
It makes me want to run away as if my hair is on fire and live in a hole at the bottom of a bridge until I get all this stuff sorted out. It makes me never want to have to deal with another human being again. That's how I feel when this stuff is running through my veins. Until I stop feeling like this - which could be any time now - and then I'm back to normal again. Normal, hell, heaven - who the fuck knows what world Susie is going to experience next hour in the rollercoaster that is copper displacement? Which nobody else in my world knows much about. I'm really tired of having conditions that nobody else knows much about. It's an extra slap in the face having to explain yourself to disbelieving people. They should be comforting me, not me having to educate them.
But then "should" is a pointless weight to place on your shoulders in these times.
But it's just one more vulnerability to pile on top of the hell that already is dealing with this stuff. But hey, at least I'm not like this full-time. Not like all of those poor bastards getting around out there with full-blown schizophrenia. Not like the guy I used to see when I worked in the city. He was the gentlest soul imaginable, a beautiful man, with no home and a dose of dealing with worse than this full-time. God bless him.
The World Bank and the IMF are probably not particularly great choices of subject matter to be obsessing about lately. But that's where my Medical Anthropology studies have been taking me the last couple of weeks. Is there anything more frustrating and hellish than being able to clearly see the machinations of these psychos? And to see how long we have put up with it when we don't need to? And how many people are still asleep to it? And how their policies affect the poorest of the poor? And how awesome the world would be without their evil influence?
But like I said, probably not a great choice of subject matter when you're dealing with fluctuating levels of a substance that inclines you towards paranoia in the first place. No. Better to lay that one down for another week. Even though it's so hard to when I feel like this. That's another gruesome fact - whenever I feel like this, the very things I should let lay low, I can't seem to let go of, and I gnaw at them like a dog at a thorny foot.
And so this is how things are for me lately. Depending on what day you talk to me. And on the bad days, it depends on what hour of the day you talk to me. On the good days, everything is coming along beautifully and I can see this lovely vista on the horizon where life gets a whole lot easier, and I get more of it back. These good and bad days are both the opposite sides of the same coin. This is the hell side. And while I say reminders to myself like "This too shall pass," it won't be a moment too soon when it all does.
This is the good side:
The Friday afternoon before last, I was sitting in bed in a last-ditch effort to try to study. I'd failed dismally so far, sitting in front of the computer and trying to make sense of the assigned readings while being distracted every three and a half seconds by something other than the assigned readings. Earlier in the day I had given in to tears in pure abject frustration. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't seem to focus on the words in front of me long enough for them to sink in. I was already getting behind in my studies, and it was only week 2 of the trimester.
Then my partner came home with the envelope which contained the test results that said that I have a condition called pyroluria. Even though I had strongly suspected it, it was still a surprise. Pyroluria is a condition where the haemoglobin in the blood produces too much of a particular substance called kryptopyrroles. This substance binds to vitamin B6 and the mineral zinc, and so when the body excretes the excess, it rather unfortunately takes those substances with it. And so I find out that I am uber-deficient in those two things. Unsurprisingly, both are used to treat ADHD. Unsurprisingly, people with pyroluria can't handle stress. That'll be me, sequestered away from the world for years on end while I try and deal with why my body is so fatigued, so depressed, so anxious, why I just can't bloody cope. I think I have the answer.
And so slowly over the past two weeks I have built up my levels of B6 and zinc. I am taking five times the daily recommended amount of B6, and I know it's still not enough (apparently the way to measure when you are having enough is regular dream recall. Not even close to that yet). And I am starting to notice a difference. The B6 in the morning and the afternoon is giving me this lovely energy. Oh, it's nothing normal people would be able to notice. But for me, there is this new stability I am feeling in my body, an understanding that a piece that has been missing for a couple of decades has now been put in place. I can only imagine this energy will continue increasing. The zinc at night (three times the recommended daily dosage) is helping me sleep. I am getting so tired at night some nights that I could go to sleep at 10 pm if I needed to. I can count on one hand the success I have had in managing to get to sleep at 10 pm over the years. It would be amazing if I could.
~ * ~
This is the bad side:
I have high levels of copper. I first suspected it over seven months ago when I did a home heavy metals test. The resulting symptoms when I tried treating the high copper were enough to convince me that (a) this is something of what schizophrenia feels like, and it's hell; and (b) though I was only a quarter of the way through the bottle that would help get rid of this excess metal from my body, this was as far as I was able to go with it. There was something else that needed to give. There was something missing which was making this attempt impossible.
Hence trying the test for pyroluria. Hooray for intuition - I stand in awe at the powers of intuition I have developed about my own body, because I was right, and a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces are starting to fit. B6 and zinc both displace high copper levels in the body. These levels have become high in the first place because of the lack of those two substances in circulation. And so the blood, in its wisdom, noticing these high levels of copper circulating within it, began the task of secretion. If it can't get rid of the copper in any other way, it will hide it away. And so it does - in the liver, in the brain, in the lungs, in the kidneys.
And so now I have begun reinstalling B6 and zinc, my body is taking the opportunity to get rid of the copper, now that it finally has the chance. And so out it comes, from where it's been hiding all these years, back into my bloodstream, and if I don't have a sauna, or shoot coffee up my arse (I never did make any pretensions to this blog post being romantic), then I begin to feel those hellish symptoms again. Like yesterday, when I didn't have time for a sauna or to shoot coffee up me bum. I am still trying to find workarounds for the emotional symptoms. There are certain supplements which help in the detoxing process (and certain other ones I am taking, such as chlorella), but it's a process of working out what works best.
When I feel like this, I feel in hell. Last night, my partner quietly but forcefully said to me, "I need you to stop talking now." I hadn't realised that I was raving, but apparently I was. But his comment came out of the blue, and I'm a fragile soul, and so it wouldn't have mattered how he said it, I still would have broken into 1037 pieces of glass.
Because it's such a weird dreamscape from here, when I am feeling like this. The only way I can identify that what I am feeling is spilling over into the outside world is when feedback like this happens. And then I think of other people I know who I suspect have high copper levels, and how they sometimes have a tendency to go on and on about certain topics until I'm exhausted. And so suddenly I realised last night that that was me, and that was how I was being.
It makes me want to run away as if my hair is on fire and live in a hole at the bottom of a bridge until I get all this stuff sorted out. It makes me never want to have to deal with another human being again. That's how I feel when this stuff is running through my veins. Until I stop feeling like this - which could be any time now - and then I'm back to normal again. Normal, hell, heaven - who the fuck knows what world Susie is going to experience next hour in the rollercoaster that is copper displacement? Which nobody else in my world knows much about. I'm really tired of having conditions that nobody else knows much about. It's an extra slap in the face having to explain yourself to disbelieving people. They should be comforting me, not me having to educate them.
But then "should" is a pointless weight to place on your shoulders in these times.
But it's just one more vulnerability to pile on top of the hell that already is dealing with this stuff. But hey, at least I'm not like this full-time. Not like all of those poor bastards getting around out there with full-blown schizophrenia. Not like the guy I used to see when I worked in the city. He was the gentlest soul imaginable, a beautiful man, with no home and a dose of dealing with worse than this full-time. God bless him.
The World Bank and the IMF are probably not particularly great choices of subject matter to be obsessing about lately. But that's where my Medical Anthropology studies have been taking me the last couple of weeks. Is there anything more frustrating and hellish than being able to clearly see the machinations of these psychos? And to see how long we have put up with it when we don't need to? And how many people are still asleep to it? And how their policies affect the poorest of the poor? And how awesome the world would be without their evil influence?
But like I said, probably not a great choice of subject matter when you're dealing with fluctuating levels of a substance that inclines you towards paranoia in the first place. No. Better to lay that one down for another week. Even though it's so hard to when I feel like this. That's another gruesome fact - whenever I feel like this, the very things I should let lay low, I can't seem to let go of, and I gnaw at them like a dog at a thorny foot.
And so this is how things are for me lately. Depending on what day you talk to me. And on the bad days, it depends on what hour of the day you talk to me. On the good days, everything is coming along beautifully and I can see this lovely vista on the horizon where life gets a whole lot easier, and I get more of it back. These good and bad days are both the opposite sides of the same coin. This is the hell side. And while I say reminders to myself like "This too shall pass," it won't be a moment too soon when it all does.
It's both enlightening and disturbing to realise how much we make our own reality. It comes in over time, dripping in like raindrops on carved rock, via those big and little thoughts that are constantly moving across our minds like clouds. We are free to accept or dismiss any one of them. Except for when we've become chained. Most times we are chained before we are old enough to know that we are. And then we move into our lives feeling beholden to accept certain thoughts every time they come, though they torment us. They have become like the monster Snow White must turn and fight off deep in the forest.
Those hardest-to-dismiss thoughts become deeply carved ruts in the road of our mind, where they harden into beliefs. Our little carts fall into them and get jammed every time. We've driven down these roads countless times before. Sometimes, perversely, we even like to drive down them precisely because they are painful, and we want to punish ourselves for not being what we expect ourselves to be. The ruts have become part of our story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Sometimes we find ourselves down the rutted roads not out of self-punishment but simply because we've driven down them so many times that it has become second nature. Just like when we drive well-worn routes and then realise at the end of them that we have no conscious recollection of actually driving here. Finding ourselves once again in these spaces can make us feel as helpless as a newborn, swamped by despair at how to change what feels unchangeable, that which we can barely see. The despair comes out of spaces of frustration where we don't know what to do, how to change, how to stop, how to start, where parts of us are still weeping, and that need reconciling, healing, hearing, patting, soothing. What we need is encouragement that we can turn off the rutted highway and forge a new road where there isn't yet one.
Surely it's the hardest work we do in our lives, forging new paths, though the benefits are amazing and the work is honourable. But how do you get to where you want to go when you have never been there before? How do you know what you need to carry with you that is going to help you get there? Sometimes our dreams tell us, sometimes what comes off the end of the pencil as we doodle tell us. Fairy tales tell us. Images that come from a disparity of sources tell us (for me lately it's ravens). It's a very foggy guessing that feels quite unreliable. But we just start where we suspect we need to start, suspecting that to carve out this path maybe we are going to need a machete, and a hoe, and a ... what the hell? What has this bloody raven got to do with anything? And you shrug and start hacking away, and oftentimes you find, like a present some deeper part of you has wrapped up for yourself, answers and deeper understanding further along the path. For me, I am thinking at the beginning of yet another path that getting to where I want to go is possibly going to involve some of this tool, and some of this tool.
The hardest thoughts of all to diminish and dismiss are the ones that are tied to unconscious beliefs. You know, those things that in the commonplace world of logic you know you don't want to believe, and in a sense you don't. But in another deeper sense you do, which is why they keep appearing all the time. Oftentimes they appear disguised as irritations we feel about others, things we are projecting onto them that are really what is hounding us on the inside.
Chances are those thoughts and neuroses are hooking their tails around something that lives in that shadowy realm of the unconscious, where all those dreams and images live, where we are like enormous icebergs and the unconscious is the part that is submerged. Where we know not what we do - or if we do, we know not why we do. Not clearly enough to see a clear path.
I've become pretty enamoured with sitting in the middle of the road until I see where I need to begin carving a new path. One that leads to I barely know what. But other parts of me know very well where those paths lead. Being prepared to walk them is part of the conscious mind's work. Believing that there is something magical at the end of those paths becomes easier now I've walked some of them before. I get to see the trees light up in my own forest. I get to meet characters that I have not known before me, who wish to help me when I return to the topside world. How beautiful it is.
Believing I shall carve a path when it relates to the biggest monster in my arsenal is much harder. And yet, all those other paths I have carved are related to this same monster. It seems that he needs to be beaten by carving many paths, not just one. And carving out the new path does not really get any easier, it just gets more hopeful that there may possibly be a resolution.
But still, all I can do is walk the path. And keep my eyes open for the surprises.
Those hardest-to-dismiss thoughts become deeply carved ruts in the road of our mind, where they harden into beliefs. Our little carts fall into them and get jammed every time. We've driven down these roads countless times before. Sometimes, perversely, we even like to drive down them precisely because they are painful, and we want to punish ourselves for not being what we expect ourselves to be. The ruts have become part of our story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Sometimes we find ourselves down the rutted roads not out of self-punishment but simply because we've driven down them so many times that it has become second nature. Just like when we drive well-worn routes and then realise at the end of them that we have no conscious recollection of actually driving here. Finding ourselves once again in these spaces can make us feel as helpless as a newborn, swamped by despair at how to change what feels unchangeable, that which we can barely see. The despair comes out of spaces of frustration where we don't know what to do, how to change, how to stop, how to start, where parts of us are still weeping, and that need reconciling, healing, hearing, patting, soothing. What we need is encouragement that we can turn off the rutted highway and forge a new road where there isn't yet one.
Surely it's the hardest work we do in our lives, forging new paths, though the benefits are amazing and the work is honourable. But how do you get to where you want to go when you have never been there before? How do you know what you need to carry with you that is going to help you get there? Sometimes our dreams tell us, sometimes what comes off the end of the pencil as we doodle tell us. Fairy tales tell us. Images that come from a disparity of sources tell us (for me lately it's ravens). It's a very foggy guessing that feels quite unreliable. But we just start where we suspect we need to start, suspecting that to carve out this path maybe we are going to need a machete, and a hoe, and a ... what the hell? What has this bloody raven got to do with anything? And you shrug and start hacking away, and oftentimes you find, like a present some deeper part of you has wrapped up for yourself, answers and deeper understanding further along the path. For me, I am thinking at the beginning of yet another path that getting to where I want to go is possibly going to involve some of this tool, and some of this tool.
The hardest thoughts of all to diminish and dismiss are the ones that are tied to unconscious beliefs. You know, those things that in the commonplace world of logic you know you don't want to believe, and in a sense you don't. But in another deeper sense you do, which is why they keep appearing all the time. Oftentimes they appear disguised as irritations we feel about others, things we are projecting onto them that are really what is hounding us on the inside.
Chances are those thoughts and neuroses are hooking their tails around something that lives in that shadowy realm of the unconscious, where all those dreams and images live, where we are like enormous icebergs and the unconscious is the part that is submerged. Where we know not what we do - or if we do, we know not why we do. Not clearly enough to see a clear path.
I've become pretty enamoured with sitting in the middle of the road until I see where I need to begin carving a new path. One that leads to I barely know what. But other parts of me know very well where those paths lead. Being prepared to walk them is part of the conscious mind's work. Believing that there is something magical at the end of those paths becomes easier now I've walked some of them before. I get to see the trees light up in my own forest. I get to meet characters that I have not known before me, who wish to help me when I return to the topside world. How beautiful it is.
Believing I shall carve a path when it relates to the biggest monster in my arsenal is much harder. And yet, all those other paths I have carved are related to this same monster. It seems that he needs to be beaten by carving many paths, not just one. And carving out the new path does not really get any easier, it just gets more hopeful that there may possibly be a resolution.
But still, all I can do is walk the path. And keep my eyes open for the surprises.
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Thursday, 24 November 2011
Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you micromanage your life to deal with your high sensitivity/post-CFS/adrenal fatigue/stresshead/empath/bad health/inability to function in the world loserness..
You micromanage your life, but then you have to take calculated risks, because that's what life is, right? Life is about living. About not needing to micromanage all the time. About jumping in.
And so seven months ago you take a calculated risk because it feels right, even though it is a stressful thing to do. But then two weeks later, when you're still dealing with the stress because of your high sensitivity/post-CFS/adrenal fatigue/stresshead/empath/bad health/inability to function in the world loserness, out of left field comes something to stress you off the dial. Your past, holding a remote control, presses a couple of buttons from 50km away, and so you are reminded that (a) getting rid of your past is not as easy as you would like it to be and (b) you can't remember what (b) was because you have no fucking memory.
Sometimes your health goes backwards in your quest to bring it forwards. I had a hypoglycemic attack last night. And so after eating two pieces of toast I didn't want to eat because I really wanted to make the stir fry I really wanted to eat but I couldn't because I thought I would melt into a puddle on the floor,, I lay on the couch for the rest of the night feeling fatigued, weak, and depressed.
I hate the world today. But hating the world and feeling depressed are no-nos in the energy consciousness field - if I do that I'm dragging down the planetary consciousness sphere with my negative mental energy, man. Because don't we all know - if we all just stay positive everything will change.
But maybe some things are never going to fucking change.
You micromanage your life, but then you have to take calculated risks, because that's what life is, right? Life is about living. About not needing to micromanage all the time. About jumping in.
And so seven months ago you take a calculated risk because it feels right, even though it is a stressful thing to do. But then two weeks later, when you're still dealing with the stress because of your high sensitivity/post-CFS/adrenal fatigue/stresshead/empath/bad health/inability to function in the world loserness, out of left field comes something to stress you off the dial. Your past, holding a remote control, presses a couple of buttons from 50km away, and so you are reminded that (a) getting rid of your past is not as easy as you would like it to be and (b) you can't remember what (b) was because you have no fucking memory.
Sometimes your health goes backwards in your quest to bring it forwards. I had a hypoglycemic attack last night. And so after eating two pieces of toast I didn't want to eat because I really wanted to make the stir fry I really wanted to eat but I couldn't because I thought I would melt into a puddle on the floor,, I lay on the couch for the rest of the night feeling fatigued, weak, and depressed.
I hate the world today. But hating the world and feeling depressed are no-nos in the energy consciousness field - if I do that I'm dragging down the planetary consciousness sphere with my negative mental energy, man. Because don't we all know - if we all just stay positive everything will change.
But maybe some things are never going to fucking change.
I turned 40 on Wednesday. I shared it with the people that I love the most, eating :) That was lovely. But I came into my birthday on the back of some physical cleansing I've been doing recently. A good thing, and necessary for me to regain better health. But in hindsight, a very unwise thing, to continue on with detoxes when your body is clearly telling you it needs a break, that you are taxing your own system too much. That your ideas about what you want to get done here do not always fit in with the reality of how slow you must go.
Seems I don't get to have as much wisdom as I would like now at 40 :) Perhaps the next decade, or perhaps the one after, I will get as much wisdom as I would like ;) Because really, when it comes to almost everything, the slower the better. Less is more. This is why I plan, this Summer, to once again try to immerse myself in the world of test cricket. Because what could be more delightful than a slow, meandering river of a sport, that allows you to read in the middle of it, to daydream? Gotta love that.
The detoxes were why I found myself in a cloud of suicidal depression that night, with every inner demon screaming. Feeling toxic. A feeling I find hard to describe and which I have felt before when I had CFS and was on a big regimen of antibiotics. Like a veil, that comes over your eyes, so your perceptions are warped (even more than usual ;) A fog of confusion, of headaches, of brain fog, of toxicity. A fog of ammonia, as the things you are cleansing themselves of die off and leave their poison in your bloodstream on their way through. Cloudy ammonia, indeed.
That night, after distress, a dream: a disembodied voice dream. It's said that these types of dreams often occur in times of distress, coming directly from your soul to get your attention. It said: "Love comes from God. You have to let God's love flow through you. It doesn't originate from you, no matter how much your enormous ego wants it to."
My enormous ego doesn't like that much but the rest of me LOVES it. Loves the thought, loves the idea, loves that river of flow. There's a whole lot I don't feel sure about these days when it comes to matters of faith, of whether Jesus even existed at all historically, though I still love him as I used to. But what hasn't changed though is the feeling and the sense, even if sometimes flimsy, that God is there weaved and wefted through everything, like a breath. In the midst of it all, the good, the bad, the ugly. Gotta love that, too.
Seems I don't get to have as much wisdom as I would like now at 40 :) Perhaps the next decade, or perhaps the one after, I will get as much wisdom as I would like ;) Because really, when it comes to almost everything, the slower the better. Less is more. This is why I plan, this Summer, to once again try to immerse myself in the world of test cricket. Because what could be more delightful than a slow, meandering river of a sport, that allows you to read in the middle of it, to daydream? Gotta love that.
The detoxes were why I found myself in a cloud of suicidal depression that night, with every inner demon screaming. Feeling toxic. A feeling I find hard to describe and which I have felt before when I had CFS and was on a big regimen of antibiotics. Like a veil, that comes over your eyes, so your perceptions are warped (even more than usual ;) A fog of confusion, of headaches, of brain fog, of toxicity. A fog of ammonia, as the things you are cleansing themselves of die off and leave their poison in your bloodstream on their way through. Cloudy ammonia, indeed.
That night, after distress, a dream: a disembodied voice dream. It's said that these types of dreams often occur in times of distress, coming directly from your soul to get your attention. It said: "Love comes from God. You have to let God's love flow through you. It doesn't originate from you, no matter how much your enormous ego wants it to."
My enormous ego doesn't like that much but the rest of me LOVES it. Loves the thought, loves the idea, loves that river of flow. There's a whole lot I don't feel sure about these days when it comes to matters of faith, of whether Jesus even existed at all historically, though I still love him as I used to. But what hasn't changed though is the feeling and the sense, even if sometimes flimsy, that God is there weaved and wefted through everything, like a breath. In the midst of it all, the good, the bad, the ugly. Gotta love that, too.
I have this dream. It's a bum's dream. I read online about a man in Utah in the States who lives in a cave with no money. Something in me soars at the idea.
Of course it's a utopian dream that the ground which we walk upon and which sustains us could be free, not fenced off into small commodities that people shore up into their bank accounts.
I know that will never happen. And anyway, the songlines were broken up. How else would a people live on this land when the songlines were broken up? But nevertheless, dreaming is still free.
Living in a cave would be a crazy, wild and whacky thing to do, as far removed from my present reality as the thought of not having to pay a thousand bucks' rent a month, of having to do jobs I despise, of being paid to do things I like. But everything changes, and strange things are realities. Indeed, one of my best friends lived in a cave in Spain for eight months, hardly spending a cent, doing yoga in the sunrise.
I wonder if you lived in a cave in Buchan, or the Grampians, how long it would take for the authorities weed you out and move you on. Back in the thirties in the Great Depression, itinerants set up camp in the land at the end of Dudley Street and along the Moonee Ponds Creek, over 60 humpies. They flew under the radar until World War II because this area was considered a wasteland of sorts, under nobody's jurisdiction.
What a grace the wastelands are.
The authorities do not like people to clutter up the landscape in this way today. It gets in the way of tourism. Cluttering up the landscape with your need is an ill-considered spectacle when there are housing estates that contain like-minded blocks with the same coloured roof tiles, their doors shut tight against each other.
I worked for several years in the CBD of Melbourne, transcribing court cases acted in by lawyers and presided over by strangely attired judges. There were so many statutes and rules and sections of Acts to follow, handed down over the years, composed into tomes, that the situation right before them needed to conform into. The most interesting conversations I had on the streets of Melbourne at that time were with a homeless woman with a penchant for philosophising who the cops harassed regularly for cluttering up the outsides of Flagstaff Station. We sat on the ground together and ruminated on the nature of stuff. She had irregular dreads, irregular teeth, an irregular psychology that kept her out there. God, I loved my conversations with her.
She discovered, slowly, she was an artist in her preceding years living in the city. She sold her art, beautiful, complex geometric patterns on black paper, drawn with gold or silver gel pen, drawn almost in a trance, soothing and smoothing out her soul somehow.
I have an overactive nervous system. I have gone from one acronym to another, from CFS - chronic fatigue syndrome - to HSP - highly sensitive person. It's just a label, something for me to discard on a deeper level, something helpful in other ways to understand this body I inhabit. On a frazzled day, a visit to the shopping centre can send me almost spare, needing a good meditation session and a yoga session to boot, to recover me from the fluorescent lights, the plastic shit, the wafting anxiety of the people walking past to buy plastic shit, intent in the lie that they are different from, separate to, the other that they are hating in front of them, getting in their way.
I feel like I take in so much some days that it thumps my heart, floods my adrenals. Too much. I see too much, it revs up the circuitry. Like a 5/4 rhythm composed upon a jangle of nerves.
That's how it is some days. I think that's why the cave looks so good sometimes. Less need for working as long, space to think, to ponder, to piece together, no rent. Just as long as I had access to a shower, so the library would let me in to use their internet connection :)
The supermarket washing powder aisle was one traversed with bated breath when I was living in the previous acronym, CFS. What they put in that shit I do not know, but the smell rammed itself in through my eyeballs and fuzzed up into my head. No one is so dirty that they need to get that clean.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone
~ Henry David Thoreau
~ Henry David Thoreau
Anyone read Walden here? It's sort of been on my to-read list for ever but I haven't got there yet. The snippets I come across from this man though, such as this one, make me think I should be bumping it up the list.
What wisdom there is in this. It's not on a materialistic level where this hits home for me most most profoundly but on a spiritual interpersonal level. See, I have this desire and liking to help people. Up on my list of the 10 things that make me feel the best, knowing I have helped someone rates up there. It's all tha gooey "I'm not just a waste of gimpy space" thing that gets all tied in with feeling the golden threaded interconnection of us all and of God and us all that just curls my toes with pleasure, you know? Along with that, I've been blessed with a few not-inconsiderable talents that mean that I can be a real help and a healing to people in need sometimes. I like to pray for people when the occasion springs itself at me and as I go on further and further into spiritual abject heresy I find my repertoire of how that plays out expanding. I can feel in my body what other people are feeling if I tune myself in. Sometimes the best sort of prayer is sharing in that sort of suffering. It feels like this amazing privilege of God flowing through me, embodying him/herself in you. A privilege. A real privilege.
I guess sometimes though I don't always know easily where it ends. Along with this gift I have this quite ridiculous overdeveloped sense of responsibility when it comes to the wellbeing of others sometimes. It is difficult to do only what I sense I are being asked to do and to then leave the rest alone. It's difficult to switch off from people who are in need. But then it's difficult not to without burning myself out in 10 seconds flat. That's partially why this introverted extrovert needs a lot of down time away from other people. I still haven't quite mastered the arts of tuning others out when I need to. I do it for a while and then I forget how important it is to do it. Suddenly I realise I am frazzled around other people, I am feeling things that I wonder where they came from and sometimes I don't realise until later that what I really needed to do was shut everyone else out because I needed to only feel myself feeling for a while instead of picking up on other people's stuff.
So, you think I'm a loony yet? :)
Sometimes you can just help too much. Sometimes you can be doing yourself and others damage by helping too much. This is where wisdom is called for. Come in off the street for a while, will ya, wisdom, and sit down a while (milk with your tea?) I need to hear you on all of this.
How about you? Anything you're whistling down wisdom about at the moment?
I've had a bit of a fatigue flare up over the past few months. Nothing dramatic, but I'm having some days where I do the basics and that's about it. I just need to ride it out, without getting too anxious and scared and losing perspective, you know? Easier said than done sometimes. But the symptoms die down again. This is not a return to the land of CFS by any means.
At least this flare-up has renewed my motivation to climb out of the sugar well, and to not fall down it again (it's a legalised drug and indulging in it every day for months on end is maybe why I am having these flare-ups in the first place). When I have energy these days, I do not waste those days. I guess this is just the land I live in of post-CFS and other health issues. It's not where I want to be, by any means. But it just is, I guess.
Yesterday I only worked five hours. I'm meant to be going to my friend's daughter's school play this evening. I've been stressing about it all yesterday, the possibility I may not be able to make it. Today I woke up and it's like it's this big dark cloud hanging over my head of having to say no to someone. As if it's of earth-shattering consequence if I don't go. It's so weird, and so annoying. I can't make it, I'm rather lacking of energy at the moment. End of story. (Just like I think this post is gonna be end of story for me today, too. Writing it has taken me an hour and now I have a headache and feel crap. Oops. Shame I don't write a blog post for a job, then I'd be sweet :)
I chatted to my chiropractor's receptionist the other day. She works three 10-hour shifts in a row during the week, and in those days she still is the one to cook dinner when she gets home at 7pm. There is a husband and a couple of sons and none of them see a problem with this situation. I guess they don't see a problem because she doesn't see enough of a problem to set some boundaries and say it isn't okay. She is like a timid little mouse, apologetic for existing. Unfortunately, people always take advantage of that situation. I did with my own mother.
This woman also looks after her father and has him stay with her from time to time after he had a recent stroke. She told me in apologetic terms how she asked her university-going son (who has two days on campus a week) to put the food she had prepared earlier in the oven, and to put the potatoes on and mash them one evening after she took her father to a funeral of a friend. Her son had the gall to whinge about doing just that. Meanwhile she's running herself off her feet.
I have a sign stuck on my playroom door which is perhaps indulging in the land of psychobabble but is nevertheless true for all that. It says: "Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong." The level to which you respect yourself is, I think, the level that others will respect you.
How do you go with the n-o word? Do you stress about it? Do you think it's something that needs to be learnt, the art of saying it? I think some people, especially women, are prone to find themselves doing things that are not in their best interests, that they don't even want to be doing, all because saying no feels Everestian, pushes ancient buttons.
The chiropractor's receptionist is a timid little mouse, but I can see somewhere deep down in her soul she's angry about it. She's angry about being taken advantage of, and she's angry that something is missing in her toolbox that gives her the permission to put down her foot. She's the daughter of an alcoholic. Her husband is like a dry alcoholic. I can see even without meeting any of them that they have little respect for her. The fault lies greatly with the father that she feels apologetic about existing. This is the power that fathers have. But the responsibility lies with her to follow down the threads of what that is all about.
"I married my father," she said to me the other day.
(We cut to the chase in our chiropractic conversations, haha. No talking about the weather for us ;)
I think hers is the sort of anger that would be pretty damn helpful for her to tap into, terrifying though it would be. Maybe she's worried if she does she'll explode like a volcano and burn everybody up. That her family will walk out the door and never come back. That she will walk out the door and never come back. Go postal. Maybe. Or maybe the anger will give her the impetus to say no because looking after herself and defining her limits is not an optional extra.
But Geez, Louise, how hard that little word is to say! I've had plenty of practice and it's getting easier but still, I've sweated a bit about having to say no to my friend when I have a legitimate reason. I still feel guilty about it. I've always felt guilty about it. The guilt is much, much lower these days because I feel like I am standing way more firmly in my fat feet. Cos really, what's she gonna do? Yell at me for not making it because I'm not feeling good? It's all so irrational, these mind monkeys that take up space in our heads!!! :)
I'm going away to lie down now.
At least this flare-up has renewed my motivation to climb out of the sugar well, and to not fall down it again (it's a legalised drug and indulging in it every day for months on end is maybe why I am having these flare-ups in the first place). When I have energy these days, I do not waste those days. I guess this is just the land I live in of post-CFS and other health issues. It's not where I want to be, by any means. But it just is, I guess.
Yesterday I only worked five hours. I'm meant to be going to my friend's daughter's school play this evening. I've been stressing about it all yesterday, the possibility I may not be able to make it. Today I woke up and it's like it's this big dark cloud hanging over my head of having to say no to someone. As if it's of earth-shattering consequence if I don't go. It's so weird, and so annoying. I can't make it, I'm rather lacking of energy at the moment. End of story. (Just like I think this post is gonna be end of story for me today, too. Writing it has taken me an hour and now I have a headache and feel crap. Oops. Shame I don't write a blog post for a job, then I'd be sweet :)
I chatted to my chiropractor's receptionist the other day. She works three 10-hour shifts in a row during the week, and in those days she still is the one to cook dinner when she gets home at 7pm. There is a husband and a couple of sons and none of them see a problem with this situation. I guess they don't see a problem because she doesn't see enough of a problem to set some boundaries and say it isn't okay. She is like a timid little mouse, apologetic for existing. Unfortunately, people always take advantage of that situation. I did with my own mother.
This woman also looks after her father and has him stay with her from time to time after he had a recent stroke. She told me in apologetic terms how she asked her university-going son (who has two days on campus a week) to put the food she had prepared earlier in the oven, and to put the potatoes on and mash them one evening after she took her father to a funeral of a friend. Her son had the gall to whinge about doing just that. Meanwhile she's running herself off her feet.
I have a sign stuck on my playroom door which is perhaps indulging in the land of psychobabble but is nevertheless true for all that. It says: "Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong." The level to which you respect yourself is, I think, the level that others will respect you.
How do you go with the n-o word? Do you stress about it? Do you think it's something that needs to be learnt, the art of saying it? I think some people, especially women, are prone to find themselves doing things that are not in their best interests, that they don't even want to be doing, all because saying no feels Everestian, pushes ancient buttons.
The chiropractor's receptionist is a timid little mouse, but I can see somewhere deep down in her soul she's angry about it. She's angry about being taken advantage of, and she's angry that something is missing in her toolbox that gives her the permission to put down her foot. She's the daughter of an alcoholic. Her husband is like a dry alcoholic. I can see even without meeting any of them that they have little respect for her. The fault lies greatly with the father that she feels apologetic about existing. This is the power that fathers have. But the responsibility lies with her to follow down the threads of what that is all about.
"I married my father," she said to me the other day.
(We cut to the chase in our chiropractic conversations, haha. No talking about the weather for us ;)
I think hers is the sort of anger that would be pretty damn helpful for her to tap into, terrifying though it would be. Maybe she's worried if she does she'll explode like a volcano and burn everybody up. That her family will walk out the door and never come back. That she will walk out the door and never come back. Go postal. Maybe. Or maybe the anger will give her the impetus to say no because looking after herself and defining her limits is not an optional extra.
But Geez, Louise, how hard that little word is to say! I've had plenty of practice and it's getting easier but still, I've sweated a bit about having to say no to my friend when I have a legitimate reason. I still feel guilty about it. I've always felt guilty about it. The guilt is much, much lower these days because I feel like I am standing way more firmly in my fat feet. Cos really, what's she gonna do? Yell at me for not making it because I'm not feeling good? It's all so irrational, these mind monkeys that take up space in our heads!!! :)
I'm going away to lie down now.
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