For years, I’ve ascribed to Spoon Theory, a popular concept among people living with chronic illness and pain. Essentially, there’s this idea that you start out each day with a certain number of spoons, and each task or activity you do costs you some spoons to complete — some tasks cost more spoons than others categorically, while there also could be times that the same task might cost you a different amount of spoons one day than it will the next time.

My friend taught me about Spoon Theory many years ago, and it was only in the last two weeks that I learned I am not supposed to expend all of my spoons every day. There should be a reserve bank to leave some spoons in day to day so I’m never running on empty. I’m both allowed to and need to keep some spoons to tend to myself!

It had never occurred to me that there should be a spoon reserve. My therapist told me, very sternly, that there is a difference between a person’s limit, and hitting rock bottom. Rock bottom is not the limit. I joked that I like to wave at my limit from the rear view mirror as I pass by it…but it really isn’t that funny.

It really isn’t that funny when you’re diagnosed with glaucoma at 36 years old and that news makes you feel like you’ve been kicked off a cliff.

I still have to function in order to keep my job and keep my kid alive, so I’ve tried not to let myself think about it too much, but in the rare quiet moments when I do so, it feels…well, it feels indeed like rock bottom. The part of my brain that always tries to make me live by comparison reminds me, as if on cue, that glaucoma is scary but treatable, that there are people fighting much deadlier diseases and issues. “At least it’s not cancer,” that part of my brain says. Yeah, sure, Brain, that’s true. AND this is no walk in the park either, thank you very much.

I looked it up. The percentage of people diagnosed with glaucoma in the age range of 31-40 years old comes to 9.1%, approximately. Nine point one percent. Yes, I am diabetic which can put a person at higher risk for a certain kind of glaucoma, but that isn’t the kind I’ve got. Being diabetic makes you at higher risk for everything overall, but, my doctors have said that isn’t necessarily to blame here. Just bad luck. Nine point one fucking percent.

And so of course in the same week or two that I’m facing this latest health issue, I had to write all of my report cards, continue teaching the three and a half teaching jobs I have, bake literally hundreds of cookies I’m giving out for holiday gifts this year, and juggle all of the usual household tasks and such I always do, plus take a sick day for both my daughter and myself because we were both fighting sinus infections to boot. Thankfully we’re both on the mend and I have managed to fight through enough of it without needing to get antibiotics this time, probably through sheer force of will. People laugh at the Wiley Coyote cartoons where he falls off the cliff and hits the bottom of the canyon, but you know, even flattened as a pancake with stars spinning around his head, he still gets up and carries on. What choice did he have? He had a job to do, to catch that fucking roadrunner. I get it, Wiley. I see you. I get it.

Apparently hitting rock bottom cracks the rear view mirror when you get down there. Forget laughing at my limits as I look back to see them behind me; now I’m worried about whether I will be able to see at all, moving forward.

Maybe I don’t know enough about glaucoma; maybe I am catastrophizing. But my father went blind from poorly managed diabetes, and while mine isn’t poorly managed, I can’t help thinking about it, and I can’t help feeling terrified, when I can find the time to let myself have my feelings.

I hope you’ll forgive the long lapse in posting, and that you’ll forgive future lapses. Literally everything hurts, but my eyes especially have been through the wringer lately, and I suspect that extended screen time isn’t helpful for my situation. I’m going to try to take it easy as best I can (thankfully there’s only one week left before winter break!), and write when I feel I’m able, which I hope will be relatively consistently, as I find it therapeutic. I’m just still getting used to the whole listening to my body thing.

Take it from Wiley and I, a lesson learned the hard way — know your limits, and stop before you get there. Save some spoons for yourself, and keep them in front of you, not in your rear view.