Let's tweak things just a bit, and bring out the "specialness" of CFS a bit more, since it is a profoundly physical disease that affects everything including mental ability -- sometimes especially mental ability.
You said, "I see that physical limitations are much different than mental limitations." My mental limitations most of those chronic years, these last 10 years, have been huge. Much of the time, I couldn't think a clear thought. The elevator really didn't go all the way to the top floor anymore.
I knew it even then, that I was not the person I had been -- mentally. I didn't know if I ever would be again. As improved as I am, I am still not the person I was mentally, before. I can feel the difference.
There are areas of thinking processes that I still can't enter -- not physically able to follow that stuff, I am still dumbed down. And if I try too hard in an area I don't have sufficient footing, I will end up in smoke and confusion and maybe, even now in my better health, have to go sleep it off.
Where you refered to the "difference between the physical and the mental" I think it would be more like, the difference between physical and emotional. Emotionally, along with the angst and anger and despair and frustration and fear, I also had a drive to do things that, mentally, I knew I wasn't even capable of any more.
This is one place where CFS is assuredly not depression, is nothing like depression. It is depressING, but the lack of desire was not there, even when I didn't have enough mental ability to articulate what it was exactly that I wanted. I WANTED. I wanted to do. And I wanted to go. I wanted to be.
With only the occasional foray into a funk where I wanted to quit -- and that was usually due to the mental, the cognitive, limitations -- I never stopped wanting Life. And being furious about the fact that I couldn't have it.
I appreciate your responses more than I can say, Diane. I appreciate the fact that you are interested in the dilemma of the CFSer, and the fact that you really try to understand what it feels like. And I really appreciate your encouraging words about my writing.
Being able to write has been one of the things I've missed most over the past few years.
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Hi Diane
Let's tweak things just a bit, and bring out the "specialness" of CFS a bit more, since it is a profoundly physical disease that affects everything including mental ability -- sometimes especially mental ability.
You said, "I see that physical limitations are much different than mental limitations." My mental limitations most of those chronic years, these last 10 years, have been huge. Much of the time, I couldn't think a clear thought. The elevator really didn't go all the way to the top floor anymore.
I knew it even then, that I was not the person I had been -- mentally. I didn't know if I ever would be again. As improved as I am, I am still not the person I was mentally, before. I can feel the difference.
There are areas of thinking processes that I still can't enter -- not physically able to follow that stuff, I am still dumbed down. And if I try too hard in an area I don't have sufficient footing, I will end up in smoke and confusion and maybe, even now in my better health, have to go sleep it off.
Where you refered to the "difference between the physical and the mental" I think it would be more like, the difference between physical and emotional. Emotionally, along with the angst and anger and despair and frustration and fear, I also had a drive to do things that, mentally, I knew I wasn't even capable of any more.
This is one place where CFS is assuredly not depression, is nothing like depression. It is depressING, but the lack of desire was not there, even when I didn't have enough mental ability to articulate what it was exactly that I wanted. I WANTED. I wanted to do. And I wanted to go. I wanted to be.
With only the occasional foray into a funk where I wanted to quit -- and that was usually due to the mental, the cognitive, limitations -- I never stopped wanting Life. And being furious about the fact that I couldn't have it.
I appreciate your responses more than I can say, Diane. I appreciate the fact that you are interested in the dilemma of the CFSer, and the fact that you really try to understand what it feels like. And I really appreciate your encouraging words about my writing.
Being able to write has been one of the things I've missed most over the past few years.
Jody
June 1, 2009 - 12:05pmThis Comment
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