This week has pretty much been a wash thus far. I’m reading ‘Mind Over Medicine,’ but mostly I’m sitting and doing not much. My Beloved and I went to get our annual labs done this week, and while my Beloved is a picture of health and fitness in every way, I am kind of a hot mess.

I’m anemic, which isn’t a big deal and is easily fixed, but I suspect I’m symptomatic this time because I have less than zero energy. I’m just bone-crushingly exhausted, all the time. It’s frustrating, because there are a lot of things I’d rather be doing than sitting in a recliner, distracting myself with time-wasters so I don’t think about how tired I am, and how much pain I’m in.

That’s the other thing that’s been frustrating lately [and a big reason why I decided to start this blog]. For the past few months [since maybe November? December?] I’ve been having major muscle aches and joint pain. It’s been bad enough I avoid activities whenever possible. On a scale from 1 [no pain] to 10 [passing a kidney stone] I haven’t been below a 4 in months, and most of my life is spent at a 6 or 7.

In other words, I freaking hurt. All the time. I’ve been having muscle spasms in my shoulders and hips. The ones in my hips [more accurate to say my butt…maybe my piriformis muscle?] feel like a muscle cramp, and only go away when I sit in my recliner with a heating pad on my low back.

It’s all been mentally exhausting, to say the least. I’ve had symptoms like this before, and periodically, I get sick of it and go to the doctor, trying to figure out if there’s something wrong with me.

There never is.

At least, nothing that can be fixed with something other than sleep, diet, and exercise. I keep coming back to the evil trifecta [I call it that because it all requires lifestyle changes that last more than a few weeks, which has always been infinitely more than I’m capable of].

I hate exercise. With a White Hot Passion that Knows no End. Seriously. I’ve yet to find any form of physical activity that doesn’t leave me dreading it after about 3 days. This is one reason I’m reading about Internal Family Systems therapy, because if I can get in touch with the part[s] of me that hate exercise, maybe I can convince them we won’t die if we get off our ass once in a while and go do some cardio.

It’s also the reason I’m starting with Mind over Medicine again, because I’m hoping I can use the placebo effect to try to alleviate some of this misery.

I just survived two of the absolute worst years of my life, and finally feel like a human being again after feeling horribly depressed and dead inside for a year. I really, really don’t need to feel physically awful after all that.

In other words, I’m still here. Still plugging away and hoping for the best.