Notes (2)

4/2

Sometimes bumping into a wall (like actually bumping into a wall) is like changing your avatar to something that doesn’t feel euphoric. And you have to keep wearing it until it fades on its own. There is no forcing it off. There is only adjusting to a new perspective.

4/3

Sometimes I just want to scream “I love this earth! Oh how I love to experience all its beauty!”

4/5

I have found everything to be arbitrary recently. Is it the lack of sleep that has spurred the adoption of narcissism?

The sudden burst of “I love…” statements creates enough joy to spare me the depression.

4/6

Nausea grips onto my lungs and holds me down.

4/18 

Arthritis is an interesting thing. It’s like the bones in my hand are uncomfortable? Are they uncomfortable? Why are they in pain? Is it the muscle in my fingers that are in pain?

I can’t straighten out my fingers without it hurting. Each time I try to stretch my fingers they spring back to a claw and ache in pain. 

I tend to say a lot of things are “interesting” and they are–but where am I going in a conversation by declaring something is interesting. Thoughts flow fast in my brain as to why I think something is interesting; am I supposed to expand verbally? 

My glasses fall off the table. I have to grasp onto the bars of stairs to pull myself up. My feet have developed arthritis.

5/5

Living with illness is an interesting life path I have yet to fully realize. But maybe it’s not something to really accept right now, maybe it’s for retrospection–meaning, understanding how to move through acceptance(?)

I’ve been considering what it’s like to truly balance my actions. Last week I had meetings and events in which I committed to understanding how my body felt. In the past, I focused so much on the event and the people that I would ignore my body/brain in order to get through the ordeals I dedicated myself to. But that’s detrimental.

“I’m coping better now. I’ve learned the hard way that concussion-induced fatigue cannot be fixed with an infusion of willpower. I’ve learned that bulldozing my way through is worse than fruitless. It’s incapacitating. I’m working on expecting less of myself—a sentence I would have been incapable of writing pre-concussion. I haven’t even told most people that I re-concussed. Explanation requires too great an expenditure of energy. So I save my breath. (Julia Nunes 237-238)

It’s a hard transition: to figure out if I am overstimulated in the moment; or am hurting somewhere. 

When I don’t scan my body or am not in tune, I crash–I take an even longer time to recover. 

“There is no forecast, no warning system, no evacuation map for the fatigue tsunamis…Pummelled into submission, delirium leads me home where I weep in crumpled sheets. (Shelley Pacholok 71)

6/14 

I wonder if I’ll ever trust the way my brain works.

7/2

I feel like shit :P but at least my hair looks good.

7/25 

I think my brain is coming out of the hole it was in for two-ish weeks.

It’s been hard trying to remind myself to treat myself with kindness, with grace.

I find it hard because I don’t know what will come out of anything.

– Grace will be a lifeline to peace.

You can’t hate yourself into changing. You’ll continue that hatred if you don’t stop it.