Just do it?

Yesterday, when I said that I felt like my muscles were atrophying, my friend said, "Maybe you can try to do little squats against the wall?" Then I spent 10 minutes blathering on about my condition trying to explain why I couldn't. Why I didn't just say, "Sure I'll try that," is beyond me. Well, maybe not totally beyond me. I didn't want to just say, "Sure I'll try that," because I guess, subconsciously, I wanted her to know how difficult things are for me sometimes. Was I looking for pity? Maybe. But it's more than that. I'm looking for understanding, yet I'm not fully sure I understand my ME/CFS very well yet myself. How can I expect someone else to understand it, or understand me for that matter, if I can't even sort it out?

So why can't I do little squats against the wall?

I'm afraid that it will make me worse. The underlying fear-based mantra of those with ME/CFS is, "If I do that, what will the consequences be?" It feels like my quads and hams are the most compromised of my muscles. Going up an incline is difficult, going down is wobbly. So if I engage them, I'll be going beyond my means and cause a crash.

Crashes are not linear and it's hard to track what causes them. I'd been tracking shit for 10 years before I was diagnosed. I fucking hate tracking shit. I'm being a petulant teenager at the moment. Why don't you track your fucking symptoms. See how you like creating a spreadsheet in Excel when you don't actually know how to use it, track what you eat and drink and what your symptoms are then try to decipher what it all means. Was it the cream in my coffee? The coffee itself? The ever-maligned gluten? Did I walk for too long on Tuesday? Did watching that sad commercial blow my emotional load?

The other day I was whining to my therapist about still having the negative feedback loop from the Before Days. That I SHOULD be doing the things that will help me get stronger. Shoulding all over myself again which is one of the problems that landed me in this mess in the first place. She suggested a change in perspective: Perhaps I do certain things because they make me feel good, not because I SHOULD be doing them. Like my yoga. I'd been doing it for 25 years. Then stopped dead. Because well, I felt dead.

I visualize getting back to the mat and downward dogging it. So why am I not doing it? Am I afraid that it will make me feel bad later, like the tiny wall squats? Yes. I am afraid.

But also, maybe getting to the mat is difficult because it's just who I am. Pre-diagnosis I generally liked exercising but I would be lying if I said I came to it easily. Like anything that is good for me, I struggled to do it on a regular basis.

So am I not doing yoga just because I still have lazy habit patterns?

Or because my muscles are so weak it feels uncomfortable doing it?

Or because I truly am afraid it will cause a crash?

Maybe all of those.

But it's also something about being able to 'get through my day.' It feels like I have just enough in me to work (at the computer), do laundry (which includes hanging stuff on the line because we don't have a dryer, which is hard for me to do because of having my Mr. Burns-like arms above my heart for too long), make dinner (a lot of standing which is also hard), walk the dogs (for which I need to get in the car to drive to a flat area because I live in the mountains and walking up the street is super taxing because of its, what feels like, 60% incline), putter around the house. That feels taxing enough.

Add some official exercise to it and maybe I'll cause a crash?

I think it's the incessant internal negotiating that's exhausting. That, and also trying to change mental habits that are so deeply engrained it feels like trying to lift concrete blocks with my mind. Uri Geller, I am not.

Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) was often thought of as one of the solutions for ME/CFS. Get moving! Of course, I agree that exercise is where it's at. It helps us all live longer. No argument there. But I've learned that GET only works when your body is already in a healing state - when the parasympathetic nervous system is in balance. GETting before you are in that state may, in fact, contribute to a feared crash.

This is boring.

Just like I feared I would become by having a chronic condition.

I wish my chronic was more like Snoop's chronic.