The Devil & The Angel

The internal battle waging war inside me right now is insane! I literally have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The angel tells me to ignore the immediacy of my problems. She tells me to go ahead with my plan of action, don't skip exercising because I'm flaring, go ahead and make the bed and do the dishes, because it's my job and has to get done anyway. The devil, on the other hand, is telling me to go buy a 6-pack of Dos Equis and sit by the pool drowning my sorrows, or eat a lot of greasy food, or basically indulge in anything sufficient enough to distract myself from the relatively minor molehill I've turned into a mountain.

Sigh. My sleep-exercise conundrum has caught up with me. While I'm getting to bed at a normal time these days, which in and of itself is a miracle, I'm not sleeping enough. This rejuvenates the viral symptoms I spent the last year caught in the grip of. My head hurts, throat and sinuses are scratchy, inside of my mouth shredded, face riddled with boils, body aching and is extra Fibro-sore, to boot. But that's nothing compared to what these flares do to my mood! I get so angry and infuriated sometimes I wonder if me, myself and I are indeed the devil sitting on my shoulder and whispering self-destructive ideas into my ear.     

It's such a tightrope, trying to rebuild my life. Discipline is my best friend these days, but too much strict adherence to the theoretical life I'm working hard to reclaim can indeed make me sicker. So when do I ignore the flare, and when do I push through? If I coddled myself every time I felt bad I would've spent the last nine years in bed. Literally. In the beginning pushing myself always resulted in a backlash of epic proportions, but these days it's how I'm making progress. Luckily tapping all this out on the keyboard has served to calm me down and clear my head. I went ahead and made my coffee, deciding to skip the beer for now, and instead focus on something I like to do, which means I'll spend the day writing my book. No exercise, the bed's not made and the dishes are still staring at me, but it's a compromise I think I can live with.

Thanks for joining,

Leah