Just One Thing

Life can be overwhelming. There's always so much to do and so little time to do it in. It's easy to just get so overcome by what needs done that you can't summon the energy to do it all. It seems like a never ending list of chores. We spend 8 hours of our day at work then come home and we're supposed to make a healthy dinner, help kids with homework, (or home schooling as is the case in many places now) and somewhere in there find time to exercise and get a full nights sleep. Some days that's just not happening.

This is true for everyone. But it impacts those with chronic illness in a unique way that is often hard for others to understand. While everyone gets overwhelmed and tired, it's hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced chronic illness that you physically can not do things. Many times chronic illnesses are invisible, and especially if you're a younger person, people will often mistake your inability to perform basic tasks as laziness. Unfortunately, this can start a messy cycle of being judged as being lazy or incompetent, pushing too hard to try to get things finished to prove yourself to everyone, and circling back around to being more exhausted than you were in the first place.

When I was in my early 20's I began to suffer with mysterious health problems that I now know were the effects of long term black mold exposure. My most severe symptoms were chronic pain, fatigue, and the feeling that I was coming down with a cold 24/7. It took around 5 years for me to get any sort of diagnosis. Many doctors didn’t believe that there was anything wrong with me and sent me home with no help at all. It was even suggested by one doctor that I may be a hypochondriac and should seek mental health treatment instead. In that time I was criticized constantly for doing things at a slower pace because I was "too young to be in pain." I lost count of the times I heard those words.

So what do you do when you're trying to hold down a job and go to school while battling a mystery illness? You get creative. You find short cuts around campus to avoid walking as far, you try to take more online classes, you nap on your lunch break. You do what you can and then try to convince yourself to do a little more. You work as hard as you possibly can and just hope that it’s hard enough to accomplish your tasks and avoid the judgement of those around you. But no plan is foolproof.

Some days you can't stand the thought of tackling a 20 item to do list. So don't. Just pick one thing. Prioritize and decide what is the most important or time sensitive. Tell yourself that even if you don't finish anything else, you'll do that one thing. And doing one thing may lead to doing another, and then another. Maybe even your entire list. Sometimes just getting started is enough to give you the positivity and motivation need to keep going.

Or maybe not. Things don’t always work out that way. Maybe you really will do just one thing today, or two if you’re lucky. And that's okay. Rest is okay. Even if no one else understands why you need it, it’s still okay. You need to take care of yourself and sometimes that means staying in bed. Life is more than a to do list. Some things can wait.