Feeling Better and More Awake
It’s been a while, again. I hate saying it. Like, chronic illness and fatigue have stolen so many years at this point and it’s just exhausting to bring up. But I’ve been much less tired since starting iron treatment and getting my B vitamins up, and I’m going to be back soon.
My main goal atm is to get the website back up to date. Plugins have expired and a main plugin I use to allow me to have those carousels for reading needs to update, and I’m nervous of the amount of work I’m going to be left with if the updates aren’t compatible. So that is my main focus, to just dig through this broken brain of mine for all the html I’ve taught myself, and to make sure things are functioning correctly with all the updates. Then I’ll worry about the creative stuff.
I have no plan, no promise of which stories I’m going to start with this time. Every time I’ve come back with a plan, this illness has knocked me down and stolen me away. So I’m not interested in making promises I can’t keep or in lying to myself. I’m going to see what my abilities are and go from there.
The fatigue has been really difficult the last two years, just absolutely crippling. A combo of iron and b vitamins (plus all the other chronic fatigue support supplements I tried until getting to this point) have finally pulled me from a constant state of exhaustion. My energy levels have improved for long enough that I’m certain it’s not a fluke. That, combined with me able to eat more than a meal a day, has decided me finally coming back.
I’ve been dealing with a resurgence of dysautonomia since getting some energy back, something to do with the POTS I had as a teen getting worse. I think the b vitamins are helping with that, and my mind seems far less fogged and distant. I’ve been feeling creative, something I couldn’t sustain when tired all the time.
As for the MCAS, it’s much better, but not cured. If I’m honest, it’s probably my greatest problem I need to overcome to get back to writing consistently. Every time I have come back to writing, within the same week I would have a really bad MCAS flare and it broke any sense of continuity in my brain, nevermind in my writing.
Every MCAS flare is like starting over as a person because of how it inflames my brain and interrupts basic living. The MCAS treatments I’m on have made it much better, but it can’t protect me from smoke and certain odors, and smoke in the house is enough to steal me away for hours to days with severe agitation, inflammation, painful sores on my tongue, etc. It’s something I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with.
Trying to make a perfect environment has failed, and trying to get my system to not respond has failed, although both improving to the level they have together has improved my day to day. Flares are going to happen, I’m going to have bad days, and I need to figure out how to prevent a bad day from turning into a loss of weeks.
I suppose my other goal is just to get my brain sorted again, into a structure that’s organized, recognizes time again, etc. Gotta remember vocabulary again, all that shit. But I think that’s like any job where you need to restudy after a long break. I gotta remember the settings on the laptop to prevent migraines. But for now, the main thing is updating the website.
I think I’m going to ditch some of the transparency aspects. I like how they look, but I’m not sure they’re all easy to read on, same with the skull wallpaper…
Hope you’ve all been well. There is so much going on in the world, much of it traumatizing. Honestly, some of the war crimes I’ve read about have made me absolutely disgusted and uninterested in writing anything taboo. The depths of the horrors of humanity are on full display lately. I don’t want to imagine worse, create villains that could compete. One doesn’t realize how much their environment asks of a writer until that environment is faced. It’s important that my writing help to deal with trauma, not retraumatize… which is a lot to ask given all the damn trauma happening globally.
When I first started writing, I would only approach it from this cheerful mental place. Even the dark stuff was still this internal playful competition to portray something in a certain way. Now I’m so busy trying to have a brain that works and to be awake and such, it’s hard to remember the fun that drove me to write. Especially with all the shit happening in the world.
Maybe writing will be about creating a less unstable world to live in fantasy for a while to help cope with the real world… I dunno. It’s been so long. I know this illness has changed me, not just physically. I don’t know if I’ll like the stories I write, if anyone will. Lol, but that hasn’t stopped me before.
Enough rambling. At least my keyboard still works. 😉
Leave a Comment