a day in the life of me

I often get asked how I spend my days at home, sans work or infants. This is an example of a pretty good day. Pretty good days come when I follow this simple routine for weeks on end, without too many outings/energy-using occasions.

I spend my days going slow, as slow as my eighty year old grandma. If I go slowly and gently, I can exist with minimal pain and actually improve a little. In the long run, I get can give and enjoy more by going this pace, because it fosters stability. I farewell the run, crash, run, crash cycle.

8.30 – I start to surface after Ben has kissed me goodbye for work. I just grunt ‘goodbye’ {this could also be interpreted by him as ‘I love you’} because I like to stay in my sleepy zone. If I wake up early, I have a guaranteed sick day.

9:00 – I slowly crawl out of bed, and start oil pulling. I swish a tablespoon of coconut oil around in my mouth to pull from it toxins which compromise my weak teeth and immune system. After 20 minutes of swishing, I go and brush my teeth. I detest the taste of toothpaste while eating breakfast, but oh well.

9:30 – I make my breakfast, and it is exactly the same every single day. Routine is a lifeline for me.

corn puffs

rice puffs

shredded coconut

chia seeds

linseed meal

nuts

rice milk

then I drink a large glass of luke warm water to keep my body temperature stable, and swallow about twenty tablets.

10:00 – Now I’m heading for a shower, and there is no rushing and not enough concern for water conservation. My dad would die if he knew I used heat lamps in the summer too. After I’m dressed and mascared, I celebrate my victory with a little sit down and no champagne.

10.30 – It’s time to deal with my postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome {POTS}. A few days without exercise and my head goes black every time I try to walk. I drive to the gym – and depending on health, this is hazardous as my eyes struggle to focus and prefer to stay relaxed and blurry. I have a program of 20 minutes of cardio on the bike, treadmill, or cross trainer, and 10 minutes of stretching. I leave my fellows sweating it out with my speedy workout, and I feel the best I will feel all day while I’m exercising. I feel alive, but it’s worn off by the time I’m back in the car.

11:30 – I’ve arrived home and it’s time to sit down, sometimes with tea and some sugar/dairy/gluten free treat. Then lunch, where I try to stack on the carbs and protein because my body uses energy the same way I use shower water.

The afternoon is less structured. If I’m still functioning, I’ll do a couple of jobs. Maybe I’ll clean the bathroom, or fold washing, write an email, make an appointment, bath the dog. If I do too much, I get wiped out on the couch with a headache and dizziness.

I need to be restful, so I’ll also read books, make things, water my garden, and do all in my power not to fall asleep. Falling asleep sometimes happens accidentally, but it also brings on insomnia, so I have to very strict with myself.

5:15 – Ben arrives home from work! Wolfie the cavoodle goes psycho with yelping and jumping, because he knows he’s about to get a walk.  We drive to the waterfront or botanical gardens for some nature and catch up time. Then Ben cooks dinner or heats up left overs {he makes incredible food!} and I make a salad, or rest if I need to.  

The evening is eating dinner, reading together, and hopping into bed around 9.30. Ben usually picks me up off the couch and carries me to bed. Then I rest up for a few minutes, hop out and brush my teeth.

The day is done! My favourite days of all are these quiet home ones, where I can be so gentle as to keep the pain and fatigue at bay. Tiring days which escalate into accompanying symptoms are the ones where I catch up with someone, have to go to an appointment, have to go to the shops....those days usually aren’t ‘pretty good days’.

Thoughtful people wonder if going out for coffee with friends might help with boredom, not realising that this ‘boredom’ is the key to feeling ok. I have grown to be content in my own company and the silence of my home, and my body thrives on peace. Others envy my idyllic housewife life. And if I felt well, and could care for my home and see friends, it would be a most luxurious and lazy life. But to me this is a full day. Just as one person’s limit is a 40 hour work week, mine is a shower, gym and a job. 

yoga confessions

i have a confession to make. i was drawn to yoga because I knew they lay down in the dark, with their eyes closed, for a portion of the class {in sanscrit, it’s called savasana or corpse pose}. my motivation actually had nothing to do with stretching or strength. it all began with going to Bodybalance, a class which incorporates aspects of tai-chi, pilates, and yoga. that’s where i learnt about yogic ‘nap-time’ at the end of class, and i will never forget how delighted i felt when the instructor told us all to lie down and get comfortable. some of the older participants got so comfortable that they started snoring like tractors. i don’t know if this is normally the inspiration for yoga, because i don’t go around mentioning it to classmates who could well be there for more holistic reasons, but when you think about the fact that my whole illness is about being exhausted, it makes senses. 

that’s what got me in the door, pure laziness. so you can imagine my first time, when i learnt i was going to have to work for that smidgen of savasana by doing all kinds of physically impossible poses {asanas} for an hour first. i didn’t think i’d need a towel as i do in cycle and circuit, because it’s yoga and in yoga you just sit around looking serene and then have a sleep. shortly into that first class, i was wet, i was red, and i was inelegantly shaking with exertion. {i do power vinyasa for those who know about these things; i found that out later, and it’s no walk in the park}.  before we even got to that eagerly awaited savasana, we did ‘inversions’ which was another aspect of yoga i was quite unprepared for; basically headstands, shoulder stands, anything upside down will do. so by the time you lie down on your mat, you have thoroughly earned it. for the next four days i struggled to walk, to lower myself to the toilet, to shuffle down the flight of stairs which led our flat, as my muscles cried and groaned with over exertion. it was actually agony and i made sure that ben knew all about it. infact, i only just recovered in time to do it again the next week. and it made me exhausted; all i wanted to do was sleep and sleep. 

considering my initial motivation, it’s quite surprising that I continued with the torture. but i found that i loved the challenge, and loved how i felt after I’d put my body through its paces. it was a physically intense work out for every muscle group, and i was learning to control and slow my breathing, a skill i’d been wishing i had since my struggle with panic attacks {a skill my psychiatrists had struggled to teach effectively}. practicing yoga was another piece in the puzzle of me feeling better overall, and an exercise session which i enjoyed, so i was committed to continuing. 

i walk up to the room holding my chai brown yoga mat, smell the whiff of incense and take off my shoes. if the scent were any stronger i would get a headache, and i am amazed i can handle it. i chose this yoga centre over another one which oozing yogic spirituality – i just didn’t want to sit still for half an hour chanting ‘shanti shanti’, and then spend an eternity in silence with movement and scratching forbidden. the instructor sat at the front of the room amid ornate cushions, prim and proper like a goddess with her legs in lotus position, and she looked like the type who would reprimand me for laughter or any other show of joyfulness. it made me think i was in an ashram and that’s one place i will never go. the only physical thing we did in that class was lift our leg up and move it in a few circles, and the whole ordeal was intensely stifling and anxiety provoking.  

my first yoga teacher told us that if we were prone to impatience in everyday life, we would probably find ourselves wanting to let go of our poses as soon as possible. i hold the pose, and inside i’m screaming, “ come on, say we can come out of it now, I’m going to fall over, my leg is burning, this is agony, you’re taking too long...nooo, don’t correct that person over there, it distracts you from realising how long we’ve been holding this position...” finally, long overdue, the teacher says we can come back into a more relaxed position, and I am the first one out of it with a crash and a bang. but I’m learning to breathe through the pain and striving to be in less of a rush. i am incredibly impatient in most areas of life, so i think yoga and long term illness are doing me some good. it helps with my anxiety, with pain management, with flexibility, with strength, with posture, with mood, with fatigue, so yes, i suppose this post is basically just a long winded way of saying ,’ i am so glad that I found yoga.’

i am heartily tempted to go along to this kind of yoga; with my uncontrollable laughter issues, i think i’d love it. watch this video here. do you think its mad or wonderful?

leg warmers i knitted for shavasana, of course

punching bags and therapy

I haven’t seen my psychiatrist for a month.

Please understand that this is a really really long time. I miss the lump-in-the-throat rants about things great and small with my unshockable, poker faced shrink. He is a wise old owl. “What’s been on your mind?” he unfailingly asks every week, and I begin to blabber on about anything from carpet stains to the uncomfortably intimate, all in his full confidence. He doesn’t laugh at anything I say, he never blinks an eyelid.

But not only have I been counselling free since just before I left Melbourne, I have also been mood-altering medication free. Right now, I am living life as raw, unrestrained Danielle Skye. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulties. 

This equation of no medication + no counselling + new city + guests (curious? read this one too) = I needed to hit something by the end of the week. Really hard.  Repeatedly. 

As I’ve said before, when I get anxious, I nearly explode. Implode. Whichever. It’s a peculiar feeling. I tell my husband that I need to punch something. To which he always replies, “You can punch me.” To which I always say, “ No, I don’t want to hurt you.” (And then he privately thinks, “you couldn’t even if you tried.”) On particularly desperate occasions when I have declined his kind offers, the dining room table has suffered, from a rather irrational woman.

picture source

 It would be ideal if I could just run to my psychiatrist every time I was losing it, for he has the most rationalising effect on me. Calmly, firmly, he reminds me that yes, I can say no to people, that yes, I can set boundaries to let myself cope, to recover my health, to foster the stability of my home.

He is now five hours away. Alas. 

I have discovered the most effective solution to this no shrink + no drugs + people issue.

 Bodycombat.

I would advertise this class as just as effective as anti depressants and excellent for sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). We need to get it into the DSM manual.

I was nervous before class. These classically trained arms of mine are on the slender side of things and people have bluntly told me that when I am punching something, I don’t look like I’m punching at all. I regret not tuning into the boxing on telly a little more. Shall I admit that my greatest fear was punching myself in the head? It has happened before, in a class. Once I start hurling my twiggy arms around pretty much anything could happen.

Well, I had a ball. I had a wild, ugly, monster kind of a good time. The brutality of the class had me in unstoppable giggles. It was utterly vulgar and rough, and the contrast to my years of ballet training was deliciously stark. Sometimes we were punching men; I assume they were potential assaulters of the opposite sex? “C’MON, make the blood trickle”, yelled out our ‘inspiring’ instructor. I sometimes made Mr. Foe my Trichotillomania or GAD. I put my disorders in a lot of pain. My favourite move, apart from the high ninja kicks, was one where we walked along like beasts, wielding a club from above our heads to the monster we were sleighing on the ground. We were staggering along in a line, swinging wildly, like massive hairy Vikings on a bloody hunt.

 It was violent and uncivilized and I was delighted. Next we ran into a circle and apparently captured some other fiend. There was nothing pretty or polite about this class of middle class girls in designer gym gear. We screamed “YEAH” as we kicked our air opponents you-know-where. I let it all out, all those perfectionist, people-pleasing horrors, which make it so tough for me to care for my body. I served them an almighty blow, and goodness I felt good at the end of class.

A great deal of mental stability came about without me hurting my table, punching my husband, seeing my psych, popping a pill or having a sob. 

Will I be back? 

Yes, for sure.

Oops I mean, HELL YEAH.

survival of the weakest

I didn’t know what to write for some time. I didn’t feel like documenting the hardness of the day to day survival...everyone knows that sometimes dull and endless rhythm of getting through one tough day, sleeping, and then repeating again and again. Actual laughter, the suffocating and nearly wetting the floor variety, which is so common for me, was stifled, smothered and replaced with a similar yet opposite emotion requiring tissues. Survival of the weakest; this best describes this period of time. But this weakling did survive and two things were literally god-sends to make a weary soul smile.

Source

One was a lady at my exercise class. She stands out from the all the rest – she isn’t attired in Lululemon and Nike lyrca, with bleached blonde hair and make-up like most of the Ivanhoe women. She wears daggy ¾ length pants, with a sloppy t-shirt, her black hair in a girl-like bob. I’ve no idea how old she is, I never can gauge age very well with Asians, but perhaps she is late 40’s. She stands out not just in attire, but in ability. She is so very uncoordinated, always executing the aerobic moves slightly behind the rest, in the most hunched over and jumbled manner – often completely lost in fact. I glance over at her, and see her face filled with the most irresistible smile I have ever witnessed. There is no shame at struggling with the choreography; there is just pure joy of moving to upbeat music and learning new things. I cannot possibly contain my smile when I witness hers because it bubbles up inside me. The faster the steps and the more dance-like, the more her beautiful face beams and she sometimes giggles like a little girl. Meanwhile everyone else has their “I’m concentrating really hard, don’t look at my sweat, I’m a cool person” contortions plastered across their faces. Intent on perfectifying their ‘hot’ bodies they are nothing on this most precious lady. I wonder why she comes to the gym every day, is it for the joy of it or is she unwell too? I feel privileged to be in her classes, because she is like sunshine pouring into my lounge in the morning or a drink of tea at the end of a long day. 

The second thing helping me survive was the ball of fluff which now resides in our small top-storey flat. He pees, and poos, and cries like a true baby, all of which are excessively wearying. But his reaction to me in the morning is enough to wipe away the memory of the hard work he sometimes is...Ben takes him out of den and he looks around to see me lying in bed. Immediately he wriggles violently in Ben’s arms, and so Ben plonks him on the bed to say hello to me. His tail wags exuberantly, and he is a ball of excited joy as he licks my face over and over, apparently delighted to see me. Why does he love me so much? Me, who often feels like such a nuisance or failure for lying on the couch endlessly and ‘achieving’ nothing. Wolfgang doesn’t care a scrap for those things, he cares that I cuddle him and nurture him. He is my most forgiving friend, and never has anyone been so delighted to greet me. Unconditional great love is the gift he gives me, and so every day begins with a smile.

the hardest fight

Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year, even though I occasionally conform to peer pressure and complain about busy shops and berserk traffic. I love re-living the story of baby Jesus...and singing carols which give me shivers, especially O Holy Night. Right now, I am sitting in my lounge and there is an intoxicatingly beautiful scent filling the air – my white lilies. I love lilies, and the smell of a pine tree, and my family, whose company is perfect, and the excitement of wrapping up & giving presents, and the magical lights at night....and then there’s the food!

The last couple of years I didn’t indulge much because of my diet, the one where I keep off sugar, yeast, cheese e.t.c, because processed foods don’t help the body to heal. But two Christmases of looking at the sauces and desserts and drinks had built up this insurmountable urge to eat delicious food. I was salivating! So I ate. And it was good. Glazed ham, and Christmas pudding, and custard, and pavlova.. I woke up at 3am on Christmas night having had a nightmare: my throat was so red and swollen that I was shocked, especially when I looked at it in the mirror. Somehow, my eczema had also flared up during the past few hours, painfully. My ears were thoroughly blocked. Thankyou body, for reminding me of my illness. I didn’t regret my carefree eating, because I knew there would be consequences and I was ready to face them. On Boxing Day, I consumed lots of Olive Leaf Extract, and Apple Cider Vinegar, and vitamin C, and no sugar or dairy – which helped my body. Taking foul remedies is easy compared to exercising, but I knew that if I wanted to feel better, I needed to hop on that bike of mine and work up a sweat. As if that’s what you want to do on Boxing Day when you body is punishing you for delighting your tastebuds. It took me till 8pm to work up the courage, because here is a true word: I do not like biking or swimming, and never have, and possibly never will.

To be fair, I do receive approximately three minutes joy during my bike ride. The first three. My quads are fresh as daises, and the route begins with a long descent...I feel the wind flying past my face and there is some kind of exhilaration, a feeling of freedom. Very quickly though, I feel despair. While I’m riding, I pessimistically liken my bike ride to my life: hard slog with a few bright moments. My thighs ache. My heart thunders. I feel the little beads of sweat forming all over me. Then a strong male with hefty quads overtakes me, and I never see him again. I don’t like him, he makes it look like a joy ride. After some time, the big hill is looming and here I start telling myself that I must be fitter than the last time I tried to get up it, so this time will be better. Alas, even when I have my bike in 1^st gear, the hill is a monster. I am ashamed to admit this, but I sometimes whimper as I’m creeping up it because I think that if I start crying, I can convince myself that exercising is too hard, and I should go home. Momentarily I feel some sense of success when the hill has finally ended, but my body is moaning for a break. My face feels like it’s on fire, and it pounds with blood. I bike as slowly as will keep my balance for a while, to allow my thigh muscles to relax....unclench a little. Eventually I reach the turnaround point, and crawl home on my bike; alternating between motivating mental speeches, and thoughts of giving up. Once home, sweating on the couch, I feel satisfied. I did it, I actually made myself do it. And now I have hours and hours ahead of me of no exercise!

The next day dawns and I wake knowing that I have to go through the whole horrid exercise experience again. It is never over for long. Never an accomplished thing.

 Overall, I prefer swimming to biking, now that I actually can swim, it’s summer time, and I have a waterproof ipod. I wouldn’t have said that the first time though, when I arrived at the pool in my pink and white bikini, ready to drown. When I arrive in the change room, I am wishing with all my might that I get my own lane. Pleeease. I walk into the pool area, turn up my beautiful flute music and immediately begin sussing out the quality of the swimmers in each lane...the slow lane is occupied by a woman in her 80’s who is swimming so slowly it is a wonder she is still afloat. I feel sorry for her, while at the same time admire her...but all the same, this is not the lane for me. In the medium lane there is an overweight man in his 50’s with flippers and a snorkel, and another middle aged gentlemen in budgie smugglers. I avert my gaze from this unseemly sight. I will not pretend that I don’t have issue with some men in this age range.  In my experience, they are a splashy, large lot. As they swim past me, I am so completely misplaced in the water so that I quite lose my rhythm, and how embarrassing is this: I choke because I get water up my nose. Then I have to stifle my chokes because I would hate for the lifeguard to think I was actually drowning. Next time round, I brace myself for their coming – and yet, I am still thrown all over the place as they galumph past me. On seeing the men, I look to the fast lane, with is mercifully empty. I wouldn’t call myself a fast swimmer by any means, but I’ll take it for now. Bliss – I have my very own lane. I begin with 10 laps of kick-board as this is a very strenuous way to start my swim. Alas, two girls who spend a lot of time at this pool have arrived and decided that my lane is the most appealing. These girls are more here for the social swim than the lap swim, but as there is no playing section, they use the lanes. I don’t feel relaxed with them standing at the end of my lane talking. Then they take off with some leisurely breaststroke....(A stroke I’d love to learn). I have to wait until they’re over half way through the lane before I can start, or I will crash into them – and as I do a lot of backstroke this is a real issue. My heart rate drops each time I have to wait this long, and my exercise program is all about maintaining a fast heart rate...I know that my times are going to be slow today and it really upsets me that I must compromise my swim. One time, I set off a little too early and ended up crashing into the poor girl at the end of the lane. I felt so guilty, but to be honest it worked in my favour. They realised that they needed to move. Then a truly fast swimmer arrives. He’s strong, and swift and powerful, and absolutely no match for me. I know what it is to swim with a slower person so I move to a now emptier lane and finish my swim in peace. The music takes the sting out of the exercise, and I enjoy the sensation of propelling myself through the water. I fight to swim faster, to move through the water swiftly. I hop out after a kilometre and I am glad.

Sometimes people say that I must have a lot of motivation. I don’t think that word applies in this situation. I don’t feel motivated: I drag myself kicking and screaming to do my exercise. I whimper my way through it. It is something I must do, so I reluctantly do it with all the strength I can muster. I don’t feel the passion to go onwards and work hard that I usually feel in flute. Part of me compels me to, and the other part is constantly inventing possible escape plans. I so much want to be well that I make myself do it, against my own will. .. It’s an endless battle, the hardest fight.  

Gorgeous pictures in blog from Pinterest