Wonderful. I really like the ability to write from my phone. So often is the case that I feel too tired to get up, but unable to sleep so it’s a welcome return of this feature. I wonder why it was removed in the first place?

Today was a washout and I’ve had enough. I can’t do anything and now I can’t sleep.

I noticed more strongly of late how my tiredness is affected by stress. I’d had my body clock sorted for a while and found that I was waking up exhausted after a good few hours sleep. The day before a client meeting which I was scared of as I wasn’t sure how it would go, what I was going to ask or what they expected and I’d also found out that I’d not got a job I’d applied for. Actually the guy was really rude so I probably dodged a bullet. Anyway, those things in my mind, my body just said no. Or rather it said “fuck you Ash. I’ve had enough! Let me rest!” Irritatingly resting doesn’t always work anyway. I’ve had a think and I’ve been tired for so many years but when the waves of fatigue come, I can do no more. It drives me mad. I have so much to do in life, things I want to learn and appreciate and I just can’t. I think that’s what makes it so hard to swallow when people tell me to go for a walk. “Hey, you know you barely have the energy to cook or eat or brush your teeth? Just ignore it. Just get on and go out for a walk and pretend everything’s fine and you’ll have more energy than you’ve had in decades!” A little like telling me not to drink once I’m half way through a bottle “hey, you know that thing you’re addicted to and can’t stop doing? Just don’t do it!” Present readers exempt from these remarks as I know you mean well, but everyone else can lick my scrotum. And who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is my diet.

The thing about dealing with such lacking energy is that I plain can’t cook those nutritious meals people keep on at me to cook. Frankly I often barely have the energy to eat them and struggle to contemplate eating them.

Anyway. I’ve been back and forth with my GP for a while now and we’re going to do one more test before he refers me to the chronic fatigue people. I don’t really care which it is but I want to fix it. Of course working less, maybe having a license to sleep instead of work, that feels like a nice idea. But CFS doesn’t have a cure so I’d rather it was something else. And maybe I don’t know how to eat healthily for a tired person either. I don’t know where it will go.

I have been reading, though, of how such an issue often comes into the lives of people who have experienced childhood trauma as well as PTSD and I have both of those. The up side is that whatever it is they can help you to manage it if not cure it if it’s something else.

The PTSD side of it is quite interesting. The experience which I’ve poured over, possibly the wrong word, but I’ve written about it before had me terrified in my flat during some time living in Brighton. Apparently if you are being abused and you can’t escape, your body goes into freeze mode where a you can do is sleep. I appreciate that what I experienced wasn’t as bad as what many other people have experienced, although I will say that it has profoundly damaged me for the last six years. I was listening to people talk about me and crowds of people outside wanted to harm me. My experience, and I don’t know how much of it was real has been running around in my head for a this time. Very recently I thought I’d stumbled on an interesting memory though. I’d sent a note telling my neighbour I wasn’t all the things he was telling people and that you shouldn’t video people in their homes, etc. But in a note back from them they actually introduced themselves. I’m not sure they would have done that if they were a threat. Whether they were denying it and guilty or just denying it. I still don’t know. I think this tidbit is still slotting into place in my mind. Anyway, I believe that the experience has compounded the effects on my energy levels of finding my father when I was ten. Yes I know I go on about all this. But it’s my blog.

The freeze state that the body goes into can apparently be handed down to the next generation because it actually changes you genes. I am open minded. I might not sound it at times when I’m struggling, but I am. I just want some energy because I feel like a lot of my life has been pissed away yet I deeply want to live. I want to learn acrobatics. I feel like I want to pick up where I left off even if I was a child at that time.

In other news I have a second client and I’ve applied for PIP, which is a personal independence allowance for those of us humans who struggle. I hate claiming anything. It’s not that I don’t struggle it’s that I feel like they might try to catch me out and that feels stressful. I don’t lie about things and I’m told quite often people doing assessments know very little about CFS. The whole thing and it being the DWP leaves me nervous. And on top of it all how will I support myself, really, if I can’t find an employer to accept my fatigue? Freelancing feels much more me but then finding clients blah blah blah.

I’m going. I’m fed up and tired. Headachy as I can’t sleep. I might just stuff my face with popcorn.

Sometimes people think I behave like a child. If only they knew. I really am a child…