I hired a therapist.
I've had a lot of different types of support through the years but not a therapist, at least not in a long time. I definitely waited too long. But it's helping.
She listens and asks questions that seem innocent enough in the moment but roll around inside me like raw stones in a rock tumbler.
How do you know when you want something sweet to eat?
What would happen if you just told her that?
Where can you make more space for writing?
During my first session, we discussed my responses to the background questionnaire she sent when I scheduled. She asked a few clarifying questions about work and relationships. Then she jumped to the bottom of the last page, where I'd given details about my health.
She said I buried the lead. The health question is at the end of the packet — that placement wasn't on me. Skeptical, she seemed, so I explained that my brain and this pain have been significant problems for so long that if I opened every interaction with them, I'd never talk to anyone about anything else. Fair, she said. And we got started.
For the first six weeks, we focused mostly on caregiving, then family stuff, and finally I asked to talk about food stuff. Each conversation felt subtly transformative, leaving me hopeful enough to keep coming back. In the seventh week, we circled back to my health.
That sounds hard. You have a lot you're working with here. How do you cope with all these different things happening in your body?
What choice do I have? Not sarcastically — what are the actual alternatives to "keep going"?
How long have you been living with chronic fatigue?
At least high school, maybe before that. More than 30 years.
Are you able to get enough rest with all that you're responsible for right now?
The chronic fatigue problem is that I could sleep 10 or 12 hours a night and still be sleepy an hour or two into the day. I was one nap short of narcoleptic in the sleep study. And no, I can't get that much sleep right now — but I did get 9 or 10 hours most nights in the months before my mom got sick and moved here. It didn't fix me, but I felt better than I do now.
Are you able to nap?
Oh yes. I can fall asleep in less than 60 seconds almost any time. I do that when my head hurts too much or my brain stops working — but it's hard to give up productivity time when it doesn't give me relief from the fatigue.
I can be tired and sleep, or I can be tired and productive.
Do you spend much time relaxing when you are not sleeping?
Yes, and...
[hip pain enters stage left]
Hip pain gives way to fibromyalgia, which opens the door to TMD and teeth clenching and grinding and broken fillings and two crowns next week and night guards and meds and ADHD and the fucking headaches.
She kept asking questions, and by the end of the hour all of my physical and neurological bits were on the table.
I felt exposed but safe. Heard without judgment. Witnessed without being dismissed.
Pure fucking magic.
And now here it all sits. The metaphorical table is covered with decades of unsolved mysteries. There's not a solution in sight.
It's her job to hear me, not fix me.
It's my job to stay. To not run away from myself again. It's so much easier to help others than to face the heartbreak of my own unsolvable puzzles — the realities of this brain and this pain, the limitations and loss and heartbreak.
It's too damn much. And it's my job to take better care of myself. Or give better care to myself. Whatever that means. That's what I'm doing now.
I'll keep you posted.
