(this was written about 10 years ago before I got really sick and lost the ability to walk from the strokes…. this is a blast from the past blog from my old Myspace days but it seemed to fit with now too so I thought I’d share it again.)

One thing I’ve learned from being down due to illness and injury is that our bodies, while very resilient in their own right, do need to be used or you lose some ability. For almost a month during the last three months, I was pretty much completely on my back (thank God for laptops!), and for a good three months, my activity has been very limited.

Now that I’m feeling a little better, trying to get up and around again physically is not easy. My legs are shaky, I get winded easily, and my back screams at me that it would much rather go back to laying down, but my mind is screaming that there is so much I want to do now that I’m feeling better! I know I need to get back into physical activity slowly though–little at a time or else I’ll end up relapsing, yet again (is that redundant?)

Prompted a discussion with two friends of mine a while back about what would be worse: to lose your body OR to lose your mind.

Gosh, the morbid things I and my friends talk about! I have never once said I was not strange!

On the one hand, I can say that as long as I have my mind, I can still work, take care of my financial needs, etc. I tend to define myself by my work, which is why I take it so personally. If I was unable to work – unable to write – I think I might go insane. Seriously and literally. Yet, I have had to slow down significantly and that is frustrating.

On the other hand, if you’re mind is gone, who really cares if you can use your body? You wouldn’t really know the difference anyway, right?

I have two grandmothers, both well into their 80s. (both grandmothers have now passed and one lived to be 94) One grandmother is sharp as a tack, but her body just doesn’t work well anymore. The other grandmother is as strong as a horse physically and completely insane (dementia).

I learned one thing from watching this: I don’t want to be old!

I think the universe is already conspiring to make that a reality for me (sigh) Bad, Michy – just look what you manifest for yourself! Okay, okay, I’m not going anywhere any time really soon, promise. Don’t you just love when I talk to myself? Oh, man, if you only knew…

… but I digress.

Maybe I’m losing my body and my mind?

Nah.

I realize, when your mind is intact and you can’t do the things you used to do, I can’t tell you how frustrating that is. I’ve only experienced in small doses, knowing and believing my body would come back to me, but the last few months, I’ve known the pain and emotional turmoil that comes from being perfectly lucid but unable to function.

It’s difficult too with the internet, as well as wonderful – ah, the paradox. On the internet, no one can *see* me. I can TELL you that I’m sick, but all you see is typing. I don’t think many people who talk to me, say on IM, truly have understood just how sick I was, or have been, recently. I’m not sure I truly let myself realize it until just now.

The curse of the internet is that I appear normal.

The blessing of the internet is that I appear normal.

(what the heck is normal?)

These people chat with me and don’t realize sometimes that I’m fading in and out of the conversation, sometimes falling asleep mid-sentence…LOL Or worse, when they ask me if I can do something or look at something, and it totally flies right past me. Or ask me to do things that I know for a fact if they could SEE how I looked, they’d have never asked.

I mean, telling someone you’re sick is much different from them seeing it with their own eyes, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. One of the reasons I absolutely LOVE the internet, particularly with an auto-immune issue, is that the internet DOES allow me to appear normal, to interact with people in a way I cannot do in person except for my amazing immediate family, whom I cannot express how much I love.

They are the true heroes in my life… the people who love me and put up with me every day, in person, and still love me both in spite of and because of all my idiosyncratic behavior and lunacies.

It makes me very humble… and very grateful.

Anyway, I realize that ‘use it or lose it’ is a good motto, because it’s true, and it’s true of both your brain/thought capacity as well as your physical body too.

So, I read…. and I research and I study and I write – to keep my mind sharp. I meditate and relax, I stress and push, to keep my brain functioning, lest I lose my ability to be me. I’m learning a new language. I play puzzle games!

Now, it’s time to work on my body again.

I won’t be willing to accept another three month’s downtime due to illness. If I can’t function, I’ll go insane, and if I go insane, I can’t function – argghhh! You see, body or mind, if I lose one, I may as well lose the other.

I don’t want to have to choose.

I want them both, dammit!

Anyway, nothing of major consequence, just Michy Rambling. I’m near infamous for my rambles by now, so I’m not sure what you were expectin’.

(snickers)

(kit kat)

(giggles)

Love and stuff,
Michy