Calmer now... (a few thoughts on fibro)
Jul. 18th, 2011 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmuppetOur system is back up, and we've basically caught up on all the things we needed to do to catch up with ourselves, so things are finally mostly back to normal. I don't really honestly mind all that much when things go pear-shaped; I'm actually quite good in a crisis.
Now that we're off that peak I'm totally brainfried, though. I was pretty foggy when I came in, but in the last half hour or so I've been doing the blank/confused/WTF was I doing? kind of thing every time I turn around. Stupid mistakes and memory glitches. Hate that. It's a lot like being involuntarily _very_ stoned without any of the fun bits. I've had to close down almost all the windows on my screen because trying to multitask (normally my mental bread and butter) is so very much too much for me right now. When I'm fibrofogged it's really, really easy to get overwhelmed by too much stimulus in general. This is rough at work, since I'm one of the primary go-to people when anyone else can't figure something out.
At least I'm not flaring in most other ways. And very, very thankfully, I have coworkers and bosses that I've explained to about the fibrofog, so when I start losing words they're pretty patient with my random gesticulating and finger-snapping as I try to remember how to talk coherently.
Still, this is one of the elements of fibro that messes with me most, in terms of self-concept. In my teens and early twenties, when the fibro first really hit, I had to completely restructure my sense of self, because so much of it revolved around being physically strong and tough. Sometimes I still resent/regret that, especially as it plays into gender stereotypes in really hard ways for me.
The fibrofog is even harder on my sense of self; even more than being a tomboy, or being tough, or any of that, my level of mental functioning has been utterly central to how I think of myself, and what I value about "me". I don't recall a time in my life when I wasn't in some way set apart as a geek/nerd/gifted/brainiac/answer-girl/info-source. It's always scary to me to feel that part of myself threatened or breaking. Even the desk job I had to switch to _because_ of the fibro is utterly reliant on my brainmeats being functional, even when the rest of my body isn't so much.
And as long as I'm thinking about ways in which fibro and other chronic health stuff (bipolar) affect my sense of self, the other big giant category is sexuality. It's such a huge part of my life, as an academic and intellectual interest as well as a form of recreation. For such a huge part, though, it all breaks much too often and too easily. A lot of my fibro symptoms require adaptations or postponements of actual play that frustrate me immensely. And when that's not the problem, it's just as likely to be my mood disorder stuff interacting in all sorts of weird ways that leaves me flat-out averse to sexuality, enough so that I don't even find it pleasant as an intellectual/academic subject. This last bout of that particular weirdness has lasted about a year. Argh. It's hard to have the kind of sex life I want when it feels like my body and my brainmeats are taking turns cockblocking me. And it's hard to feel self-confident about exploring new involvements when there's so much to explain about what might or might not work at any given time. That isn't to say that my partners haven't been awesome about working around all this crap, but damn, I wish they didn't have to. I wish I didn't have to.
And all this rambling makes me sound much more down and upset about this stuff than I actually am at the moment. I'm pondering it, partially because I'm brainfoggy today, partially because I'm starting a new involvement and a lot of this is on my mind at the moment, but it's also how my life works, how it's worked for 20-plus years now. I've learned a hell of a lot from the experience, and I'm not entirely sure I'd trade that. If I got a magic wish in that regard, I think I'd be more likely to wish it to be fixed now than to wish I hadn't had the experience and learning I've had from it by wishing it'd never happened.
Now that we're off that peak I'm totally brainfried, though. I was pretty foggy when I came in, but in the last half hour or so I've been doing the blank/confused/WTF was I doing? kind of thing every time I turn around. Stupid mistakes and memory glitches. Hate that. It's a lot like being involuntarily _very_ stoned without any of the fun bits. I've had to close down almost all the windows on my screen because trying to multitask (normally my mental bread and butter) is so very much too much for me right now. When I'm fibrofogged it's really, really easy to get overwhelmed by too much stimulus in general. This is rough at work, since I'm one of the primary go-to people when anyone else can't figure something out.
At least I'm not flaring in most other ways. And very, very thankfully, I have coworkers and bosses that I've explained to about the fibrofog, so when I start losing words they're pretty patient with my random gesticulating and finger-snapping as I try to remember how to talk coherently.
Still, this is one of the elements of fibro that messes with me most, in terms of self-concept. In my teens and early twenties, when the fibro first really hit, I had to completely restructure my sense of self, because so much of it revolved around being physically strong and tough. Sometimes I still resent/regret that, especially as it plays into gender stereotypes in really hard ways for me.
The fibrofog is even harder on my sense of self; even more than being a tomboy, or being tough, or any of that, my level of mental functioning has been utterly central to how I think of myself, and what I value about "me". I don't recall a time in my life when I wasn't in some way set apart as a geek/nerd/gifted/brainiac/answer-girl/info-source. It's always scary to me to feel that part of myself threatened or breaking. Even the desk job I had to switch to _because_ of the fibro is utterly reliant on my brainmeats being functional, even when the rest of my body isn't so much.
And as long as I'm thinking about ways in which fibro and other chronic health stuff (bipolar) affect my sense of self, the other big giant category is sexuality. It's such a huge part of my life, as an academic and intellectual interest as well as a form of recreation. For such a huge part, though, it all breaks much too often and too easily. A lot of my fibro symptoms require adaptations or postponements of actual play that frustrate me immensely. And when that's not the problem, it's just as likely to be my mood disorder stuff interacting in all sorts of weird ways that leaves me flat-out averse to sexuality, enough so that I don't even find it pleasant as an intellectual/academic subject. This last bout of that particular weirdness has lasted about a year. Argh. It's hard to have the kind of sex life I want when it feels like my body and my brainmeats are taking turns cockblocking me. And it's hard to feel self-confident about exploring new involvements when there's so much to explain about what might or might not work at any given time. That isn't to say that my partners haven't been awesome about working around all this crap, but damn, I wish they didn't have to. I wish I didn't have to.
And all this rambling makes me sound much more down and upset about this stuff than I actually am at the moment. I'm pondering it, partially because I'm brainfoggy today, partially because I'm starting a new involvement and a lot of this is on my mind at the moment, but it's also how my life works, how it's worked for 20-plus years now. I've learned a hell of a lot from the experience, and I'm not entirely sure I'd trade that. If I got a magic wish in that regard, I think I'd be more likely to wish it to be fixed now than to wish I hadn't had the experience and learning I've had from it by wishing it'd never happened.
