I Have Low Energy

Upcoming Holidays

November
11/3 Full Moon
11/3 Satanic Revels
11/23 Thanksgiving
December
12/3 Full Moon
112/21 St. Thomas’ Day/Fire Festival
12/21 Yule/Winter Solstice
12/24  Christmas Eve/Satanic and demon revels/Da Meur/Grand High Climax
12/15  Christmas Day
12/31 New Year’s Eve

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I Have Low Energy

I’m sorry I picked the 10th, 20th, and 30th of the month to post. I used to do the 5th, 15th, and 25th but I got behind and changed the dates, pretending to catch up. I like the old way better. There is just too much going on around the end of the month and I am distracted and don’t feel like writing. By the time I get five days into a month it is a bit better. It’s easier to write about ritual abuse, and easier, I bet, to read about it.

I still feel I have nothing to say about Halloween. If the whole country is putting up Christmas decorations, like they are here, maybe it will fade from national consciousness. Would that be a blessing, or not? Mixed bag, I bet.

I have very little energy these days. It’s better in the morning. I set the timer for ten to fifteen minutes and work on the computer and then set it for five minutes for housework. Dishes, cats, plants, laundry, tidying up. On the days when I have no appointments, I notice I run out of steam around four in the afternoon. When I come back from an appointment, it is generally around four or five and all I feel like doing is flopping down. I would gladly spend the rest of the day in bed reading junk and eating chocolates.

I am sure part of it is normal slowing down because of aging. Thirty years ago I was working full-time, keeping my house clean, and jogging! Plus I had a social life. Now most of that is impossible. The chronic pain of arthritis severely limits my ability to walk, and jogging or dancing and other such fun things are totally out of the question for the rest of my life. So I can’t blame not jogging three times a week on low energy.

I certainly couldn’t work full-time because so much time goes into taking care of my decrepit body. Doctors and dentists and physical therapy and exercise is equivalent to a half-time job, at least. And I tell myself that email and the blog and such are also another good twenty hours a week. Someday I should log it to see if I am kidding myself.

Chronic pain is also a ferocious consumer of energy. It wears you down. It takes energy to buck the pain and move the body or even to be civil. Pain also interferes with sleep, and poor sleep leads to low energy, which leads to more awareness of the level of pain I am feeling because it is hard to get lost in something interesting.

And then there is the question of sleeping with cats. It’s a terrible idea if you want to sleep through the night. They want to play, they want to have their chins rubbed, they get hungry, they want the other one’s favorite spot. Their meows are piercing. This is the one thing I have control of but so far I have not been willing give up the comfort of contented purring and warm furry bodies against mine. I’ve half-heartedly tried to exile them, but if I dare to go to the bathroom they shoot into my room and hide under the bed until I am asleep.

My state of low energy has been going on long enough that I can’t blame it on October. My best guess is that it is part of normal aging. Here I am, having wanted to be normal for years and years, and now that I am normal, at least in one respect, I hate it. Just hate it! No pleasing me, no siree.

Hmm. I think I am a lot more affected by Halloween than I realized. Felt sort of weepy all day, and forgetful, too. I forgot to post this on the day before Halloween and I have been unable to reply to comments because of some not yet understood glitch in either me or the software. I bet it is me. In a day or so I should be back to normal (haha)

Oh, well, it’s all uphill for now . . . until Thanksgiving.

Guilt is my Middle Name

Upcoming Holidays
June
6/20  Summer Solstice
6/23 Midsummer’s Eve
6/23  St John’s Eve
July
7/4  Fourth of July/US Independence Day
7/8  Full Moon
7/25  St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God
August
8/1 N Lamas/Lughnasadh
8/7  Full Moon
8/7  Partial lunar eclipse: visible in most of Europe, most of Asia, Australia, Africa, and eastern South America.
8/21 Total solar eclipse: totality visible in parts of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska Iowa,  Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; partially visible in other parts of the United States, Canada, Central America, northern South America, western Europe, and western Africa.
Important dates in Nazi groups
6/6 D-Day: invasion of France in WW2
7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party

 

I’m sorry this is late. I got caught in one of those computer quicksand storms where every time I correct a mistake six more appear. Now I could have published it on time with mistakes, but I am too proud.

Guilt is My Middle Name

I feel guilty about so many things! Sometimes I feel that if there is a word for something, I feel guilty about it.

Now I know that I can’t possibly do that many things to feel guilty about in a day. Therefore it must be a “feeling” flashback to one of the innumerable times I was told as a child that it was my fault, that I was bad for doing or saying or thinking such things, that I should be ashamed of myself. Those messages were repeated so often that they coalesced into a basic belief about myself. I’ve known for decades that it’s hooey, but the feelings still flood over me.

Here’s what inspired me to write about guilt. For the last few days I have been upset by something I wrote in the last post. What popped into my mind was “OMG, I lied. I wrote something that wasn’t true. What should I do? Say nothing, and hope nobody notices? Confess and apologize? Or just explain?” I’m choosing to explain.

See if you can spot the lie – um, inaccuracy – in this paragraph. I don’t imagine you can.

“My horse’s name was Badger. He was a beautiful dark brown, nicely proportioned, and very mellow. We rode on trails in the park, some paved, some dirt. There were native flowers in bloom and also “exotic” ones like climbing nasturtiums. There were stretches where I had to duck to avoid low-hanging branches. All we did was walk, but I didn’t care because I could pay closer attention to the plants and sunlight and the smell of the horses.”

But I know. I didn’t smell the horses because my sense of smell is going south. I no longer can smell flowers or cheeses or cat boxes. I also often smell things that aren’t there and most of the time I can’t identify the odor. It feels like something unpleasant that I have never smelled before. It’s all just a normal part of aging. <sigh>

All horses have a strong, distinctive smell, even when they have just been washed. I was around horses a lot when I was a kid, and I loved their smell and loved the way I smelled after I had hung out with them. These experiences were in the forefront of my mind when I wrote that paragraph and I came from that place, not the present.

Was it a lie? To me, a lie is something untrue said on purpose to protect oneself or deceive somebody else. So no, not a lie. A falsehood? Certainly. An error? Certainly. An inaccuracy? Certainly. Something to feel guilty about? Certainly not!

Guilt is such a big issue for me. I bet I could spent a whole year writing about it. But I have a short attention span, and luckily other things would catch my interest!

I Hate Uncertainty

I will probably will write about the post-Christmas period in the next blog. But no promises!

Here are two pages about my personal feelings about Christmas:
 https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/christmas-plans/ (The images disappeared — I don’t know why.)

https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2014/12/20/ephemeral-equilibrium-another-christmas/

This page is about the source of winter holiday customs. I wrote about Yule and the winter solstice but a great deal applies to Christmas, too. https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/yulewinter-solstice/

Whether it’s personal or on a big scale, uncertainty makes me nervous. I know intellectually that things can change in an instant, any instant, and I will be absolutely unprepared, but I wrap that horrible idea in a cozy blanket of denial. Gets me through the day.

There is massive uncertainty about the direction America will take. I pass on that: nothing much I can do. I will just endeavor to be a decent human being, giving of myself when I can, being as productive as I can. And trying to be more aware, loving, and grateful each day.

On a personal level, I have learned that I can sometimes diminish uncertainty by becoming more informed about whatever it is that is bothering me. Sometimes, not always. Sometimes things just get convoluted.

The Internet is awesome for gathering information! I remember the old days when I had to go to the library. I always ended up surfing the stacks and I spent lots of time sitting on the floor reading books that had nothing to do with whatever I was trying to research. Fond memories – the dusty smell of books, old leather bindings, the joy of coming across a wonderful mis-filed book. But it took up a lot of time, much more than surfing the Internet, even with the distraction of crosswords and cat videos.

I especially hate uncertainty about medical matters. I find that if I have a name for something, I calm right down. But when the doctor doesn’t know or won’t tell me, I am on my own. I can tell the difference from a legitimate website and misinformation or attempts to sell me some magic product that will make me all well again. It’s hard to do, though, because I’m anxious and it is time-consuming.

I’ve just done a good job of avoiding what I thought I wanted to talk about.

Deep breath. Recently I have noticed that I am having trouble with my short-term memory. For example, I put dinner on the table and sit down to eat. But I haven’t brought a fork. So I get up and go to the kitchen to get a fork. But when I am in the kitchen, I have no idea what I came to get. It takes a long moment to come back to me. This can happen a dozen times a day.

I was like that when I first remembered stuff and I was totally overwhelmed. I knew my behavior and the remembering were connected, so I spent exactly zero minutes wondering if I was getting demented. But this time I think it has nothing to do with my RA background. Of course I might be wrong, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Feels more like being stoned. And, of course, I have been reading recently about “mild cognitive difficulties” being a pre-clinical symptom of Alzheimer’s. It apparently shows up about ten years before Alzheimer’s sets in, so I have some time to prepare.

I’ve noticed a couple of other changes. One of the side-effects of the anti-depressant I take, Wellbutrin, is trouble remembering the right word for something. It’s been there for quite a few years but it got a good deal worse about three or four months ago. I stop in the middle of a sentence, frozen because I can’t remember the word or a substitute for it. I can see the object if it is a noun, and I have an idea of what it is I want to express if it’s a verb or adjective, but there are no words associated with the image or idea. If I am writing, I just put XXX where the word should be. By the next day I can fill in the blank.

I know this is aphasia because my mother became progressively more aphasic before she died. It was from TICs — transient ischemic attacks, mini strokes, when the brain is deprived of oxygen for a short time. But her arteries were all clogged up, and mine are clear. So that’s not the explanation.

(Huh. I just thought that this is the linguistic version of not knowing which object I wanted from the kitchen.)

Another problem is that my fine-motor coordination is shot. Can’t thread a needle, even though I can see the thread and the eye of the needle. My typing is horrible because my fingers don’t land where I want them to. It often takes me as long to clean up a sentence as it did to write it. Very annoying, given the amount of writing I do. It’s also embarrassing when I am rushed and miss some mistakes.

I’m not as worried about clumsiness being a sign of early dementia because I have never read anything about it’s being associated with dementia. But who knows? Maybe I just need to do more surfing.

Now that I have put my fears down in writing and told y’all, it’s unlikely I can keep the denial going. Time to get sensible. My first step will be trying to find some self-administered screening tests for cognitive decline. If things don’t look rosy, I will tell my doctor, who is absolutely wonderful. I can’t think further than that.

Thanks, everybody, for listening.