I think I knew the second I woke today that it was going to be a day spent not achieving my daily plan at anything like a normal pace. I didn’t want to wake-up or get out of bed, I just wanted to lie there cocooned by duvet and comfortable with my head cradled in my pillows, I wanted to lie there and drift. Drift, that was the warning, that was my first feeling of the day, I wanted to drift, I was confusing want with fact as drift is all I seem to have done well so far today. I haven’t the slightest ability to move beyond slow or very slow and my brain just doesn’t want to play either, just happy to float along minute to minute not pushing or spurring me on in any way. So here I am one hour later than normal and actually not in the slightest bothered by the fact I know I am going to be struggling to just do what I normally do before I head to bed again. The only thing good about all of that is I actually don’t care!

It’s odd for me as I am normally such a driven person, always still striving to improve on everything I do and determined to not let standards slip, just because I am ill is no excuse for sloppiness. It’s a drive I have had all my life, I used to think it was because I was brought up to believe that you were never ill enough not to work and you worked not from the date society said you could leave school and get a job, no you worked from the moment you were physically and mentally able to fulfil the tasks given to you. Now, I actually think it goes much deeper than that, that I was actually born this way. I know that I was born what my mother called content, not needing anyone else to entertain me or keep me busy, I did that all for myself from before I was able to even walk, which makes me think I was actually born with the drive to achieve constantly without anyone around me to push me, I do that myself. Being able to let go and just be happy to drift, just isn’t natural, days like today always have that alien feel, almost as though I have been drugged. On the good side, I actually quite like that who cares feeling for short spells, but disturbing if it goes onto long.

There is one problem with drifting, it makes you very aware of every sensation that is anywhere in your body, almost as though your senses are heightened and ever the slightest feeling is amplified to make sure you don’t miss it. Something that I don’t need to know that yet again my legs are refusing to relax and let my feet touch the floor again, the tightness in my lower legs seems to be part of me just now, everything I have tried to release it, has failed. It is really strange just how short a time it is from first noticing, to being part of the background pain, anything new takes. It is almost as though I forget that I didn’t have that pain a month ago, as now it is just there, making itself known from time to time, but normally just fuzzed into the mass. The longer that I have lived like this more and more things that once drove me mad have either become so minor I don’t even notice them, or so completely covered by something stronger and bigger that I no longer have anything but the memory they were once there. Your bodies ability to assimilate and absorb is huge, layer upon layer of pain and bizarre sensations, all now just normal and all massed into one. Over the years, it has formed this background mesh that is just always there.

It actually takes something to change for you to even notice the rest around it, a bit like someone sticking their finger into a beautifully decorated cake, that finger mark makes you see what was destroyed, just as that new pain makes you notice the lack of what you have lived within that area for so long and had stopped even paying attention to. For anyone who doesn’t live with pain, it must sound a bit like madness that your entire body can be in pain, but you don’t even notice. It is no more madness than stepping off a plane in a really hot country, those first hours you believe you won’t be able to breathe because it is so hot, a few days later you are lying on a beach absorbing and enjoying every second of it, the heat hasn’t changed, you have. Pain is like that, not enjoyable, but the longer it is there the more normal it feels, as long as the painkillers hold at that level, you can go on living, let the pain change or breakthrough and just like someone who doesn’t live with pain, you notice every second of it, until it is controlled again and fades back into the low-level mass that is normal.

I know that part of my desire not to drift but to keep achieving to keep myself busy is just as much part of my way of dealing with pain as taking my tablet is, being busy helps to push it all into the background. I know achieving does so much more than that but as a painkiller it’s pretty good, just think of how pain can stop you from sleeping, you’re doing nothing so all you can think about is that pain. Sitting just drifting may sound on the surface as a wonderful relaxing thing to do, for me it is the totally opposite, but when my body and mind decide that concentrating and drive are just not happening there is no relaxing believe me. In my book the worst thing anyone can do if they are in pain is to do nothing, keep your brain as busy as possible, if you can’t keep yourself physically moving but don’t give into it, when you do, believe me, you are just going to make it feel worse.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 25/03/12 – Happily living abnormally

I was reading through some posts today and I kept coming across one of those pet hate phrases, one that has always annoyed me ‘a normal life’, I wish someone would tell me exactly what ‘a normal life’ is. When I look back on mine I think I have had several different lives and none that I would describe a normal or abnormal. I always seem to somehow be living lives that others find odd a little odd. Throughout my life I have unconsciously tried to cram in as much that was different as I could. Yesterday I showed the dark-side of my teen years but like everyone else had a good…..