It’s been a rough week for me. I broke my big toe on my right foot on Sunday last week. I am battling an intense sinus infection (not the worst I’ve ever had but definitely rough). Had some kind of minor tummy issue Tuesday night and was racked by muscle pain in my back for days afterward thanks to the vomiting. And then my kid got sick with sinusitis from me, right around the time my husband left on a work trip for five days. Honestly, I have not been physically capable of doing much in the last week. I’ve spent so much time in my armchair in my living room, reading and doing a little school prep on the computer, occasionally dozing, and watching lots of food television which is my go-to thing for comfort (and white noise). It’s very unlike me to do that, and frankly, I’ve been feeling mentally stir-crazy even while my body tried to tell me, “too bad, so sad.”

Last night, for the first time in eons, I actually slept a solid seven hours. Every night I wake up at least twice; when I opened my eyes this morning, I expected the clock to give me a wee hour, and it said 6:34AM! The sun was peeking through the window around the edge of the curtain! Obviously I could have slept past this time, and I did try to lay there and relax and let that happen, but I felt like I’d had enough rest and wanted to go downstairs and enjoy a quiet cup of coffee before my daughter got up. So I did. And I proceeded to have a somewhat productive morning of school prep work on the computer; it was late morning before I started feeling a little fatigued again, so I rested some more then.

And then, this afternoon, I decided to do a complete overhaul of my entire wardrobe. I emptied drawers, got rid of what I didn’t want or need, and returned clothing to the drawers. I pulled almost everything out of my closet, got rid of what I didn’t want or need, and then put everything back in a very specific and organized way. In case this doesn’t sound like a big deal, first of all, I have a lot of clothing, and two, I’m very short, so reaching is quite difficult. Besides, you know, recovering from illness and contending with a painful broken toe in addition to my usual physical challenges are the exact right circumstances to ransack my closet and dresser drawers all afternoon.

The end result is great and I’m proud of it, and really happy to have gotten it done. I feel accomplished in a way that I haven’t felt in days (or for months when it comes to this project that has been aggravating and taunting me for months). But that accomplishment has a tradeoff. After hours of that work, followed by cooking dinner, followed by tidying up from dinner…I’m finally sitting again, and the pain is thrumming through my body like a lightning strike.

Chronically ill people always overdo it. If we’re not accused of being lazy, we actively worry about getting accused of being lazy. If there were could ever be an illustration of what the mindset of the chronically ill would look like, I suspect it would be an Escher drawing. There’s no beginning or end, no way to win. In the end, the emotional thrill of productivity is always tempered by the physical detriment we feel afterward.

I have the organizational skills and motivation of a great young studious person…and the body of a decrepit octogenarian. It’s one of the reasons I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time and energy — both mental and physical — in heavily planning out my organization for my classrooms and teaching materials this summer. It’s not that I don’t know how to get organized; it’s that I literally don’t have it in me to make it happen a lot of the time, especially if there are factors that make it even harder (such as splitting myself between multiple classrooms for the same subjects, which luckily is not happening this year, I’ve got one classroom for third grade, and then the art room downstairs for art classes). I’m hoping that if I can get myself set up for success straight away, the systems will be in place for me before I inevitably feel too worn out.

A friend of mine explained a metaphor to me years ago that I have thoroughly adopted into my conscious awareness of my chronic pain and illness; it made a lot of sense for me and may be familiar to you too. It’s called Spoon Theory. The idea is that you start each day with a set number of spoons, and each task you complete during the day uses up some spoons. A good day is a day where you don’t use up all your spoons, and a bad day is…well, self-explanatory. The tricky thing, though, is that you don’t have the same number of spoons each day, and some tasks may use up more spoons on some days than on other days. For example, maybe I’ll have a day starting out with 20 spoons, and taking a shower and doing my hair uses up five of those spoons. Or, I could start out with 12 spoons; now, the five spoons for showering and hairstyling feels like quite an expense to weigh out. Or, I could start out with 20 spoons, but showering and hairstyling takes up 12 spoons, and that doesn’t leave much more for the rest of the day. Maybe I can still use up some spoons for showering if I don’t bother with my hair; maybe I’m better off skipping the shower for the day since I know I have a ton of dishes to wash and also promised I’d bake some goodies for a friend’s birthday. It’s all very unpredictable. The chronically ill live in a world of cost-benefit analysis that’s practically innate. These kinds of decisions are frequently impossibly hard, and as a result, we push ourselves too much. It is so difficult to explain to healthy folk who can’t fathom what we fight through every day, and we worry about their judgment and presumptions because we don’t want to be seen as “less than” or less valuable, that we put a lot of effort into seeking normal, seeming like we can handle it. So we do handle it. But man oh man, do we pay for it later.

I wish things were different. I wish that I weren’t 35 years old and waiting to hear back on a referral to a rheumatologist. I wish that my body could go as fast as my mind.

I should probably abide by what I tell everyone else, and take things one day at a time. One thing is for sure, though: I am out of spoons for the day.