what evil befell me in the night?

On Tuesdays I have a slight problem. I have a problem that I don't want to talk about much, because I know full well that I am to blame. And if I talk about it, well, then my counselling listener may say: "How about you either stop bringing this upon your self, or don't complain? Don't hurt yourself and then moan that you're hurt."

And I fully agree, and fully disagree. 

I wake up in the morning on Tuesdays and hello dark world, something is wrong. What evil befell me in the night? Yesterday I was living on land, and today I have been dragged beneath the deep waters and not been turned into a mermaid. A metal corset has been screwed around my waist, and hanging from it are two rusty chains with concrete weights attached to them. I have to wade for hours, and the waters feel thick, slow, and the weights are heavy.

My cells are not the same as a healthy humans, alas. Though, alas is not a sad enough word. Alas seems to shrug, too nonchalantly.  

My cells cannot heal micro tears in my muscles whilst generating the energy I need, all at the same time. That would be asking too much, that would be asking for the pleasantness of normality and we must not forget that All Normality Must Have Very Unpleasant Side Effects. If it didn't, would I really have CFS?

I ate a delightful slice of normality on Monday night. I've been starved of normality ever since I was eighteen and it became a status not to be attained any longer.

 I dance with radical happiness on Monday, ecstatic to be moving and strong enough to move. I don't feel my illness once I have begun the class. I am in a room of women who are intoxicated by ballet's precision and elegance, who are sensitive and who laugh freely. I laugh too freely, to the bright-red and sometimes way-longer-than-anyone-else stage, to the dorky stage, to the 'faithful bladder, must we flirt with disgrace' stage. I am not Danielle-The-Ill there, I am Danielle. I dance with all of me, I laugh, I talk, I forget pain and loneliness and difference, and I feel as myself as I can feel. Without a moments hesitation, this is the most pure spark of joy in my life. It's an antidepressant bordering on euphoric drug - but I of all people should know that antidepressants are not side effect free. My last one caused my mind to conjure up such abusive sweat-drenched dreams that I had to farewell those little pills of yin and yang, stability and torment. 

My cells stop giving me life while they work on my broken ballet muscles, leaving me feeling sub-human, a human body in appearance but chained in painful slowmo land.

Oh I need to get a nappy for very-busy always-talking toddler? OK, sure. Let me wade against this heavy water, or is it oil, it must be denser than water? I'll try to shift with these weights dragging me low. Oh, now I need to empty my own bladder. I think that can wait a dozen minutes or hours. I can't fight the seas and these chains. I am just too drowned to do much more than survive. I read "heave ho, up we go," Aurelia's book about a bus that has gotten stuck in a hole. She dictates that I read this book two hundred times a week, and it is not lost on me that I share a lot in common with this pit prone bus. On Tuesdays it's hard to say "heave ho, up we go," let alone "heave ho" myself around.  A tractor gets it out of the hole. My tractor is Wednesday's arrival. 

The side effect of one hour of dancing and half an hour of talking with people I love...is, well, a kind of internal physical abuse that lasts twelve hours. Do the maths and it seems that perhaps the side effects aren't worth the pill. 

But here is the thing: I am so wretchedly tired of side effect mathematics. And even more tired of side effects themselves. And even more tired of avoiding side effects, which is code for: not living very fully. 

I have been reading a book on raising children and the author puts forward that parents and educators should equip children with a rich interest in many good things - in literature, art, food, movement, music, nature, truth. Things that will later help that person live fully, not miserably and messily and depressively. (Not that mental sickness can be whisked away with a dose of nature, if only, but it will always enhance a life.) Seeing the beauty in life, given to us as therapy, is essential when work and challenges rise high.

Humans weren't meant to live between four walls, their only contact with the outside world being a screen. Illness often forces one into a little four walled prison, with not much abundance of life. 

I choose to live fully on Monday night and suffer fully on Tuesday, and the maths of pleasure to pain doesn't work out, and I could avoid that pain if I didn't go, and I should not groan that I hurt horribly when I brought it on and even paid money to bring it on...

But, I am a human being and I need to dance or else I might morph into a grey-minded robot who stays at home to avoid micro tears and macro consequences, and whose heart forgets what liveliness is, embittered by caution and restraint and post exertional malaise. Embittered. Physically struggling, but not putting up a struggle against despair. 

In the end, I can risk torture Tuesdays, but not a listless life.