Recovering, Moving forward

Last Tuesday I woke up near 3 am with a terrible sore throat and just feeling like crap. I felt that way for a solid 6 days and today I woke up feeling like a burden had been lifted. 

I was useless for most of the past week, looking around at the clutter in the house with no will or energy to clear it up. Today I got up and cleaned the house, my lungs are still a bit heavy, I'm still a bit tired, but I think the worst is over.

Today is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. I don't feel qualified to say too much about him, to quote him, or act like I know what his fight was all about. I only know snippets, bits of info from movies and TV shows, a little bit from history class, quotes from people's Facebook posts. I don't feel qualified at all to talk about him, his life, his legacy.

All I know is that he was trying to fight injustice and that he was trying to make a better world for his children. 

I know that one group of people subjugated another group and justified that by making the other group into a subcategory. This happens all over the world, it still happens. 

People enslave others to benefit from their labor. They make others into this subcategory of "less than" to steal from them and subdue the guilt they might have felt for doing that to another human being. 

It is easy to want to just say, "that was so long ago." Or to say "I didn't do that to others, I am not my ancestors." Maybe I could feel like that if the people who had been subjugated had been summarily restored to a livelihood back then. If they would have been treated with respect and invited into society as equals, I would think "let's leave all that in the past." But I know as well as everyone else that didn't happen.

That the people who had been held as property had to fight for their standing in society. Not only that but they are blamed when things get violent because "we should be able to just work things out peacefully."

We know that nothing will change if no one puts up a fuss, that's the way of the world. There's a concept I've heard of recently, that of getting into "good trouble." Fighting against oppression, racism, bigotry, hatred, and fighting for our survival in this world are all things to fight for. 

For further reading and understanding, I'm going to read what he wrote.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/king-papers

https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/books-bibliography/

What is Happening?

For some reason, no matter how many times I try to explain what's going on with me, it doesn't help.

I'm going to describe what I go through. Most of the time my breasts hurt, from the sides radiating into my armpits they ache, the middle and upper areas are tight and hurt if pressed, my nipples get chaffed easily. So I try not to agitate any of this area. I don't want anyone touching or bumping them. I want to protect them. Trying to make me aroused by touching them makes me feel violated, hurt, upset, withdrawn and really sad. Because I know that they are the fantasy of men, the objects of desire and are intricately tied up in the desirability of a woman. I know that it seems like I'm withholding a part of myself from my partner and it seems like part of the problem that I have in my relationship.

The other things that I'm dealing with vary in severity from day to day and sometimes aren't a problem. Most of the month I have a degree of what is called brain fog it makes it hard to concentrate, it makes me feel confused and it's sometimes hard to make decisions because I can't think through them quickly. Day 1 of my period I know I'm going to start because the brain fog suddenly clears and it's like coming out into the sun after being in the fog all month. 

About a week before the start of my cycle (bleeding) I get progressively more achy, it's hard to move, I don't have energy, my joints hurt, my muscles hurt. It's harder to sleep because everything hurts (which makes everything worse, I need a lot of sleep to deal with my body). I get sensitive to lights and sounds, I'll have a light headache or occasionally sharp stabbing pains in different areas of my head or a migraine. I get more anxious, confused, clumsy (I tip things over and drop things), I forget things and it's hard to concentrate. My sense of smell tends to increase and some smells make me feel nauseated. All I want to do is sleep but ironically I also need to pee a lot as well so it's hard to settle in.

Then the more insidious side of this disorder start up, I don't like to look in the mirror because I don't like what I see, my body, my face, my hair, my clothes all make me feel a little sad. I push these thoughts away but then I have other thoughts. I feel like I'm not good at my job, the dirty house makes me feel like a failure, the projects that we're working on are overwhelming because I can't seem to get them under control (and I start feeling like my house is just crap anyway), my children's struggles make me anxious and sometimes I'll start ruminating about them all night. 

Meanwhile

I usually start off my week days by getting up to take the girls to school. I stumble out of bed and put on some warm sweatpants and my glasses (sometimes my contacts depending on how well I slept). Sometimes waking up interrupts the aching, fitful, non-rest that I was enduring and when I get back from dropping off the girls I can go back to sleep having moved around a bit and worked out the kinks. 

After sleeping a bit more I wake feeling a bit better and get to work (sometimes taking a bath right before starting but sometimes holding off because I need to get working).

I settle into work by following a familiar routine, tea and toast, pitcher of water and cup. I get through my day often not realizing until too late that I've got nothing planned for dinner and this creates anxiety in me. Usually by the time you get home I've finally gotten into the thick of things at work and I can't stop to fix you an after work snack otherwise I'm worried that I'm never going to catch up at work. 

Sometimes your mom lets us know that we're invited for dinner, sometimes we play the "what should we do for dinner game", sometimes I can make something simple. most of the time I'm overwhelmed and not ready or able to cook anything. 

For most of the day I'm battling these symptoms and trying to be a productive member of society. I do all I can to get through the day, until we lay down and relax,