Living with CMT, Day 14,169

I'm learning.  Again.  Still :) This time, I learn how I respond to stress.  This blog could be Living with Unemployment or Living with a Toddler or Living with a Messy House and Lots of Chores and Busy Children and Rain, Rain, Rain on a Teeny-Tiny Budget while Fatigued. At least they all start with Living :)

Beauty is everywhere, even with all of the stress.  In blooming flowers and green grass.  Laughter and love.  All good things.

But that isn't what I learned.

I learned that my reaction to stress is to "do stuff".  I don't care what stuff.  Cleaning, handwork, shopping, video games, whatever can keep me moving forward and keep the busy-thoughts from racing to the front of my mind.  I like to move.  Go places.  See things.  And this would be all well and good except . . .

Except my system does not like to "do stuff".  Not for very long.  Not for days-on-end.  My system wants calm and quiet.  Read books, watch movies.  But don't knit, don't handwork, don't even click a mouse for awhile.

Calm and quiet and still.

Drives me crazy.

So when I'm in the stress-zone, I don't care about the physical consequences.  I don't care about numb fingers or tingling toes.  I don't care about fatigue.  I don't care about anything except moving forward, moving faster than the worries.  Something will always be numb or hurting, I think.  And waiting around for 'golden health' means nothing will be accomplished.  The piles will pile higher.  The ideas will crumble into vague memories.  The moments will be lost.

It becomes a frenzy.  Until the crash.  And these days I can go from frenzy to crash within an hour.

Yesterday, I was okay with my hand being 'asleep' for the next few weeks.  That's how it feels, like my fingers have gone to sleep, and they feel remote and tingly, like I wear a glove without wearing a glove.  And I was fine with it because I need to be knitting and handworking these days.  I feel emotionally better.

And an hour later, I thought, Have I gone crazy? It takes months to get the feeling back to normal.  I can't keep doing this to myself.  I have to stop.

The tidal shifts.  Energy combines with will-power until I reach the eventual agonizing limits of my determination.  I think that's what can be hard to understand, from outside.  Why I keep pushing at the limits, why I get so frustrated when they re-assert themselves and I stand, exhausted, in the rubble of my efforts . . .

I don't know how to be anything else.

Even now, I need to clean the bunny cage before taking Anika to the movies (fun!).  I don't have answers.  Just the learning.  Always learning :)