.Being.Us

Dear unnamed friend, I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it. I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional. I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares. I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons. You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up. You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the w...

I don't have enough spoons. If you know me well, you've probably heard me say this more than once. So, what do I mean? Spoon theory is used by some physically and mentally ill patients to describe energy levels. Basically, a spoon represents a certain amount of energy. Everyone starts the day with a certain number of spoons for the day. A healthy person would start with a higher number than a person with chronic or mental illness. Each task throughout the day takes a certain amount of energy, or number of spoons. Different tasks take different amounts of energy for different people. So, say a person with chronic illness starts the day with 21 spoons. Their day might look like this: Getting out of bed- 3 spoons Getting dressed- 5 spoons Hygiene- 7 spoons Important phone call- 6 spoons Now, they're out of spoons for the day. They might be able to take a break or nap and recover some spoons, but they might not. An abled person would start the day with more spo...