The Spoon Theory

I sit here  in the early hours of the day, sipping a cup of my favorite tea from England -  PG Tips – while Dekker lies comfortably snuggled  up on my lap, quietly snoring away.  As I look out the window of my view, fog has blanketed our fair city.   Although night has given rise to morning, morning has found herself cloaked in a heavy, gray blanket that has wrapped itself around her.

Lights peek through the haze, alerting me to the dawning of yet another day.  The melancholy and solitary mood of the fog mimics mine today.  A quiet contemplation whispers through my soul.  It tells me, this is a day that I won’t get much done.  Despite taking my herbal sleeping remedy and getting to bed on time, sleep chose to evade me.  After tireless hours of chasing after it, I chose to get up instead.

It never ceases to amaze me how someone who is so exhausted can have so much trouble getting a good nights sleep.  That seems like such a paradox. And yet, several times a week, if not more, I find myself desperately searching for just a couple hours of deep, restorative sleep, only to come up empty handed.

I actually don’t mind days like today.  There was a time when I would have been beside myself.  Being a type “A” personality, taking it easy was never a concept I easily grasped.  But today…

I look at it as a gift.  How many people do I know that would give their last dollar to have a couple hours to just sit and enjoy the quietness of the day.  Life has become so very busy for so many people.

As someone who is innately introspective, these days afford me the ability to analyze things I’ve read, conversations I’ve had, my goals, my dreams, life, anything that strikes my fancy.  It was here that I kept thinking about a comment that was left on my blog by a woman who has Lupus.  There are quite a few similarities between CFIDS and Lupus, probably the most obvious being fatigue.  A challenge for me has always been how to explain to someone who is not ill, what this exhaustion is like.  I finally borrowed the coffee cup analogy out of desperation just to have something I could use to give my friends an inkling of an idea of what it was like.

I have never assumed that those who are not ill, will ‘get it.’  They have no frame of reference to do so.  However, after repeatedly hearing how people understood what I was going through, because they were ‘tired’ as well, I finally realized I needed to have some way to explain to them that, that was not the fatigue I was referring to.

I have only had two friends – one I have been friends with over 20 years and the other around 12/13 years – who have ever called me and apologized for not understanding what I was enduring.  I never expected they would.  I mean, how could they. So their calls were a pleasant surprise.

You see, both of them had recently suffered serious, short-term illnesses, and suddenly realized that the fatigue they were enduring was probably very similar to what I struggle with on a daily basis.  And they were right.

One of my friends, the wise soul that she is, got an epiphany as well.  She realized that her illness had a terminating point, and thus, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  She knew that she could get through it because it would eventually come to an end.  She then realized that for me that was not the case.  She understood in that moment that I had been struggling with exhaustive fatigue for 20+ years, with no end in sight.

I remember when she shared that with me, I realized that at that moment, she got it.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for my friends, I have no intention of hoping for a serious illness to come along so they can ‘get it!’  That is why the commenter with Lupus impacted me so.

You see, she shared a theory she had with me and the story behind it.  At the request a friend to explain what it was like to live with Lupus, and her attempt to explain it, while knowing her friend wasn’t ‘getting it’, she suddenly had this incredible epiphany!  And that epiphany became, The Spoon Theory.

If you don’t have a chronic illness, but know someone who does, or if you are like me, and want to find a way to help others understand what your are going through, her theory is brilliant!  As I do not have permission yet to post her theory here in full, I am just going to link to it.

I hope that you will take the extra few minutes to read it, even if you have to bookmark it to read later.  Also, I would highly recommend you grab a couple of spoons to help the analogy sink in.    I am grateful that she was kind enough to take the time to share it with me, so that I can now share it with you.

Let me know what you think of The Spoon Theory by leaving a comment here.   I am very interested in hearing what you have to say.

Determined to continue forward,