I live inside a bubble. Sometimes it changes in size. It got small last year for a week or so. I shuffled around the house and lay in the sunshine. But every day I wondered over the edge of the bubble and gave it a prod. I was pleased to find it expanded with relative ease each day. In only 4 months time it had expanded so I could walk up and down the steep road I live on, then cycle to school in Glenorchy and back, then travel to northern Australia for 21 days of bushwalking, finish my next teaching prac and work as a track ranger again.
The bubble contracted again this March.
Outside the bubble is the memory of summer mountain peaks, the undone permaculture projects in my backyard and sea-kayaking in the winter sun.
I can see them, but I can't get there.
This year, when I venture to the edges of my bubble, they are not so malleable. It is a precarious place to be. When I got past the edge, it feels like hot slivers of glass burn into my lymph glands. It feels like shaky ground. I could fall from there.
This week has been the week of accepting that my fatigue illness this year has a different character to last year. The energy expansion is not easy and linear. It has taken bites out of my people energy this time, not just my physical energy. Its edges are painful, and they aren't yet clearly visible. I can stray beyond them and not know until later that I've been there.
So now it is time for discipline. To stay sitting in the centre of the bubble, even if I could go further. To celebrate resting. To forcefully stop myself straying close to the temptations at the edge. To take time to find out how to sense where my edge is before I stray beyond it. To save up for it, if I need to expend energy. To limit my activity in a strict and mathematical way.
Its time to switch into serious glandj-fighting/non-fighting. Feel free to cheer me on when I stay in bed instead of go out and do fun and productive things : )
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