Today is one of those frustratingly contradictory days when I am aware of my blessings, but the simplest of things have become a massive effort. I’m not a happy bunny because my entire spine and head hurt and my brain feels foggy and useless. It’s rapidly becoming a priority to wrap a metaphorical warm blanket of reassurance around my thoughts, knowing that my current incompetence could very easily teeter over the edge towards an avalanche of self-destructive emotions.
Hopefully, this post will reassure you that, despite previous posts, I am NOT living in fairyland. Rather, I’ve become especially good at pretending that everything is okay by focusing on the beautiful aspects of our world (including people’s behaviour) and just going with what parts of me are still functioning well.
However, there are shadows that lurk at the edge of my awareness but never forgotten. They are beliefs born out of experience that say:
Belief Number One: “If you stray over the line, there will be hell to pay!”.
This is common to other friends who are chronically unwell and is a bit like slowly mapping out a minefield. After a handful of years, if you’re lucky, you learn to respect where your limitations lie before triggering a massive setback; where you can or cannot stray, if you will. Like how far you can drive or walk or hoola hoop, how much time is safe to spend chatting over coffee with an energetic friend about the imponderables of life, how much noise or activity you can tolerate, how much rest and recuperation you will need afterwards or how to read what your body is telling you at any one moment …. There is no guidebook with everything elegantly and accurately mapped out. But once learned, these limits are ignored at our peril, regardless of how we look, what others expect of us, or how well we are perceived to be. My life consequently feels safe though rather limited, with no room for emotionally costly regrets.
Belief 2: “On days where you are unable to manage illness and pain, you change into a whinging, self-deprecating farce of a person who, in Gollum-esque fashion, will lose every friend who gets to see you this state”
This last belief is in fact spectacularly wrong, but it’s hanging around rather inconveniently, like an irritating wasp that refuses to find another individual to annoy, until you are forced to run screaming indoors. It maybe was true in a past version of my life, but now, a more helpful message would be something like:
Belief 2 Revised Edition: “When you get ill, it’s time to allow yourself a disabled day!”
It’s taken me a while to learn that it’s a sensible strategy to hide my reality from most people that I meet. It helps to avoid the bullying and hostile looks that my friends with more visible disabilities have to endure. But more importantly and relevantly, I get to hide disability from myself; where cycling helps to boost that feeling of ‘normality’, whereas walking feels absolutely horrendous so is avoided at all costs. I do NOT want to be disabled, ill or ‘limited’ because it’s just too upsetting to comprehend or accept.
The gear shift into allowing myself a ‘disabled day’ can be instantaneously transformative, stepping from a place of ‘fear’ to a sense of compassion towards myself and others. It’s a state of grace almost as if moving closer to God. I prescribe NOTHING but being kind to myself. No challenges, no expectations, no recriminations. Friends have been warned never to take my silence personally. To prevent their concern, they know to stop worrying when they simply find delayed hearts and kisses in their inboxes; no messages, no thinking, no planning.
I realise that I love my close friends for their unconditional acceptance. They value the pale, rambling, unfocussed version of me, just as much as ever and their kindness and thoughtfulness at such times serves as a reminder that times like these actually bring us closer. Such is the inherent gift in learning how to embrace those ‘disabled days’.
