Why I've Been So Quiet Lately...

It’s not like me to not be writing all the time. And I’m starting to get back to it, but rather slowly.

I think my 4 months of severe flaring scared the shit out of me.

From mid-July through mid-October, I was fatigued so badly my life, modest as it already is, completely disappeared. I was listening to podcasts, staring at the ceiling, stuck in bed. I’d have to calculate when to get up to use the bathroom, and could only manage 1 meal most days. (I wasn’t expending many calories, so I wasn’t that hungry, luckily.) My better days, I could get up to watch TV for a while, but often just sitting up in a chair was exhausting.

And I didn’t know why. Sure, I have this chronic illness that screws my immune system into being both too strong and too weak. Most people catch a cold that lasts 2 days, and I’ll catch it and it takes me 2 weeks to shake off. On the other hand, allergies will make my immune system act like I’ve got to get ready to fight a disease or toxin and… it’s bullshit. My immune system is on the stupid side.

Lately, I haven’t been exposed to many colds– or anything really. I’m in an area that masked up again. I rarely go out, and when I do, I wear a mask like everyone else here. My roomies both work at home and also go out only rarely (Mike more than Cat, but mostly for hikes) so I’m not getting germ-reactions. Why was my immune system tricked into going apeshit? I could barely even fucking move!

I looked for allergens. But nothing was new to explain it. (Except the mice in the ducts thing, but I didn’t grasp that until later…)

And I was facing the complete loss of my life. If I couldn’t figure it out (and I didn’t have the energy to do much to investigate the matter) then I would be stuck with this awful new reality… maybe forever!?

So I did what I always do when overwhelmed and scared shitless: I went inwards into my imagination and pretended I was someone ELSE living a better life. Total escape fantasy stuff and very elaborate. If I wrote fiction, I would never run out of material.

Then things changed, I started to get better again, and I could stop using my fantasy coping method. Except I didn’t. The self-soothing method was too… compelling for me to give up right away. It felt very indulgent when I could be more useful in other ways, but I didn’t want to be me for a while. I didn’t want to deal with reality. Reality kicked me hard, and I ran away from it.

I was lucky I had that choice, I guess. Still, I was disappointed that I couldn’t seem to get my shit together.

Now, I’m starting to feel more like myself, so I guess it just took a little more time than I thought. And I’ve got to forgive myself for that period of recovery and move on.