Guilt or fear

I've been having a flare-up of fibromyalgia. It happens every year. For that matter, to a lesser degree, it happens every month. So combining spring and that time of month has knocked me out.

I feel guilty about it. W. was encouraging me to accept it, and to let go of the guilt, and to allow myself time to focus on meeting my body's needs.

Thinking about it, though, here's the thing. I think that the guilt helps me to stave off the fear of what this means. I mean, if I'm lazy, that means everything is under my control. If the problem is not trying hard enough, not committing myself to doing what I need to do, what I should do, what I want to do... then, conceivably, I can decide to do differently.

But if the problem is a physical disability, it's not under my control. If I'm not faking the fibromyalgia, if I'm not making up the DID, then I can't just decide to be better.

And it's even harder to accept that with the DID, I actually am doing everything I am "supposed" to be doing to get better. With the fibro, yes, I could be taking meds (none of them actually worked when I tried them, but I could keep trying different ones). I could be getting massage (which did reduce the pain and fatigue, but only when I had a massage therapist who was experienced with both fibro and survivor issues, and which didn't actually do away with the fatigue and pain to the extent that I could manage a full-time job year-round). And that's about it.

I am not good at accepting what I can't control. I am good at controlling myself, at forcing myself to do things that, on cooler reflection, I can't really handle. This is hard.

And there's the sheer boredom of being too exhausted to sit up for more than half an hour, or to hold up a book for more than an hour at a time. There's only so much a person can do, flat on her back (and despite having hundreds of TV channels to choose from, there's very little to watch).