Being kind to myself and everyone I encounter, an ongoing thing that I will fail at sometimes but always have the new moment to do better in...or something like that...continues...
Monday I slept most of the day. The man who is collecting the information to see if I can have funding to repair my leaking roof and dusty concrete floors wanted to visit. I switched the ringer off the cordless phone and unplugged the corded one. I am breathing easier but I just could not cope with him visiting just for a short time. It is a stressful thing and besides I have been really very ill. I slept again later and woke around 1 am. I was able to eat again. I thought I would fall back asleep but I have been managing to relax and as I didn't want to watch anything new in case I fell asleep I went back to the start of Heroes yet again. Not needing to concentrate on it and letting my mind wander.
I was thinking about all sorts of things ambling around the concepts I have been exploring about life, reality, what's going on in my world and yours and ours. I was thinking about the history as stated on the BBC thing about the one woman from Africa, how we went from hunter gatherers to farmers, from tribal to the roots of civilisation, which has possibly always had some very uncivilised flaws. How human survival has always depended on us supporting each other. I read on a support group page how bad the symptoms are that a fellow ill person is suffering and how they feel unable to ask the doctor about it because they are worried about looking like a hypochondriac due to the high number of various symptoms they suffer with.
I was lying in my bed passively 'watching' the drama allowing all these thoughts free reign to dance about till they maybe formed an orderly queue to a so far conclusion about stuff. I was also admitting to myself I still feel less than or more perceived as less than for not being well enough to participate in life the way I would prefer. Although it isn't so bad when it is 'just' like it is now. I am not particularly rough feeling not well feeling but at a very slow pace I can stay comfortable with tiny forays into moderately uncomfortable, which before I become chronically persistently ill would have been considered considerably below par and now is considered pretty damn good.
I feel somewhat unlikely to be understood by most people, including the man who wanted to visit but not the lady who visited the last time. I felt more comfortable with her, the anxiety was high to meet her but I felt more understood and safe with her visit than most. Over the last 24 hours or so I have battled with myself to say I don't want to carry on trying to get this help that I need. I just want to move, which would be just as much work in many ways. I had gone into panic again about the work needed doing to move forward into a more comfortable environment, free of damp and mould. The dealing with people invading my comfort zone that isn't exactly the safest it could be and the work to clear the space for the floor to be fixed. It is daunting if you are in reasonable health. When you have been a borderline emergency for weeks on end and are now just the more usual quite good with plenty of rest, it seems somehow more daunting.
I also should go to the doctors to get a new note around 28th September the 3 months from the last one is up. I have been too ill to go to see about any further tests or chance of diagnosing something that would explain my multiple symptoms, not that I want to get a label for them but because it is demanded by the system we have a name for something for the symptoms to then be ignored in the assessments. I also read an apology from an ex-atos nurse who knowingly gave results on the tests that would have the 'clients' declared for work when she knew they were far from it. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/nurse-makes-heartfelt-apology-after-1340838
The nurse who did my assessment jumped on anything she could state truthfully that could make it seem I was fit and not affected by health issues. She also left things out and decided I was lying a few times so put her version of what she assessed me as. Saying that I try to think of my children seems to prove I never feel so overwhelmed I feel like ending it. It was a Friday I probably failed before I got there, she may well have given fair assessment to the maximum number of people to be awarded benefits that week. Oddly when it is a more life or death type struggle I tend to be more concerned with staying alive. Long stretches of feeling awful but not in a particular life threatening way is harder to deal with in many ways. Not that it is much fun being too breathless to eat or sleep. I guess it is no wonder I sometimes get a bit down. I prefer to make light of it all and enjoy whatever moments I can. They could be my last, we never really know how long we have so no matter what it is probably wise to enjoy as much of it as we can.
I was able to walk to the car in the early hours, it didn't start. It needs taxing by the end of the month. I've had 10 weeks back pay at assessment rates. Things I need/must/should do are piling up and I am still struggling to be able to manage daily basics.
I still haven't got to the point I was trying to make in the last one.
There is other unkindness that has been in my story. There are varying degrees of kindness with and without understanding. We are all ignorant as well as kind or unkind at times, sometimes intended kindness can be a bit cruel and sometimes cruelty can be sort of kind, I suppose. I may have to sulk a bit more about that before I can be thankful for some of it. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, especially when we allow ourselves to have our tantrum about it, sulk and pout and feel righteous, get up brush ourselves down, breathe ~ very important that one I can vouch for that, it is really really uncomfortable to not do that well, and keep going at whatever pace we can manage. I am going slower than average tortoise pace and that is okay. I am making peace with that. If anyone thinks it is not good enough, well that is their opinion and nothing to do with me. Actually probably a sign of how hard they may be on themselves, even if they indulge their own flaws, with or without recognising them.
I just remembered what I intended to start this off with. It was about the luxury of being able to be too busy to constantly ponder these issues, confronting the deepest fears, shadows and concepts of how lacking we are for what we can or can't achieve, have or do. I was also considering how we need to focus on what we can do to heal. We can't however ignore what we can't do. We can't function at a level that a person without many debilitating symptoms can if that is the way it is for us. With at the very least close to adequate financial, physical, mental and emotional support in many areas of care we can do more, be more. Although we may be able to survive some pretty harsh times and keep surprising ourselves at our resilience, determination and ability to process the resentment so we can at least remain kind to most who come into contact with us. I've been practising softening the feelings around the ones who have been cruel, for my own sanity and to take away their power to keep hurting me, through me harbouring that pain. Dealing with past trauma that way is helping now, it is a continued practise of staying engaged with living.
Another point I have been wanting to make is the many stories that state, 'I know this bloke who says he has a bad back and I see him doing this or that.' The way the lazy, scrounger rhetoric has been embedded as an excuse to hound all ill and disabled people really gets to me. Yes if it is daily seeing someone doing things that indicate they are fit may mean they are on the fiddle, occasional activity witnessed is a different beast. We never know how much someone else is suffering, we may look at them and think they are being a wimp or a fake. I know there are people who have seen me in that way, which is another reason I don't try so hard to hide my suffering and also understand I can never know how much or how little others I meet have or are suffering and ignoring much of it and hiding as much of the rest as they can.
Being kind was always something I aspired to. Knowing the effects of cruelty more intimately than ever I did before makes loving compassion feel even more necessary.
Practising always on the easy ones to love when the more difficult ones are beyond my current capacity and quite possibly visa versa...mutual keeping distances...makes it easier to forgive the resentments of why, when the reasons may make sense but the energy of it all is the thing that keeps the game in play. I've gone into vibrations without a reintroduction...I was lying having trouble relaxing the other night when I started thinking about the vibrations of feeling good and of the giggles I had shared earlier...my tension was exterminated and I fell into a happy funny dream filled sleep...which at 09.11 am I am about to attempt again now.
I don't think anyone really knows but I think I have some good ideas and I read other ideas that bits seem about right. I read a thing the other day saying I am an apocalypsoptimist, I lean towards that. We are in the middle of the shitstorm already but even if it gets worse before it gets better, it will get better...survival is for the most adaptable, not just the rich...kindness will be the new black but not just a fashion statement because the shit in this shitstorm sticks to cruelty kindness maybe is the metaphor for tin foil wrapping...winking grins...
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