Listening to my body

Do you ever have one of those days where your body says, “Whoa whoa whoa, slow down! You’d better rest up or you’ll have to pay for it!”

I’m having one of those days. Yesterday I was very “productive,” in the sense that I made a lot of food and then cleaned up the kitchen. (Healthy and delicious food, I might add.) I think I would have been okay if I hadn’t made the spicy olive oil bread dip, or maybe if I hadn’t gone out afterwards to pick some friends up at the airport from their 10:30 pm flight.

Either way, my body is saying, “Rest.”

So I’m going to listen, otherwise it will get much more insistent. It’s like fibromyalgia is a voice for my mind, body, and spirit. Enough stress on any one of them, and fibromyalgia gets a wee bit louder.

“Pssst, hey, you might want to lift with your knees next time.” (back gives a twinge.)

“Okay, if you’re going to walk around a lot at least wear those inserts the doctor gave you.” (slight foot pain added to the chorus)

“Do we have to stand by the kitchen pot the entire time it’s steaming? Can’t we set a timer and go sit down?” (fatigue)

“Wait, you’re going to cook something else? Okay, but we better get to eat it once you’re done. We’re hungry.” (hunger, fatigue, and pain)

“Dishes? Okay, there are a lot of dishes. But you had better sit down and rest after the dishes, young lady, or you will be sorry.” (pain and more fatigue)

“You want to extend your curfew so you can go out tonight? Well, if you do that you have to rest tomorrow. I mean it. No going out to the museum like you wanted to.” (really, really tired, on the edge of a headache)

Every time, my body ratchets up the pain and fatigue just a notch – trying to get me to notice my limits. If I really, really don’t pay attention, it screams at me. (Or as a friend says, I have to “pay the piper.”) That’s when it takes the stern-parent-you-are-SO-grounded approach by incapacitating me for several days – or more. “You will rest, because I said so.”

Honestly, I think all people have these kind of limits. If you are “able-bodied” and you run on little sleep for a long time, your start getting cranky, have trouble driving, etc. It just takes longer for your body to scream at you. With fibro, it’s like my body is a little trigger-happy, and is VERY insistent that I know my limits.

It’s that balancing act I was talking about the other day, although maybe I’m personifying my fibromyalgia a little bit.

Winston Churchill had severe depression, which he described as his “black dog” that followed him everywhere. I suppose fibromyalgia is a little bit like that, although I picture it more as a little gremlin on my shoulder that starts gnawing on me if I don’t listen. Or maybe it’s more like my own body rebelling, and us a time-out. After all, why create this artifical divide between “my body” and “me”? That’s a subject for a different post.

Signing off now, so I can go rest.