Neural Jazz

Some days the fight feels worth it.

Today isn’t one of them.

Today I sat on the floor to load the washing machine because apparently putting dirty clothes into a fucking machine is now something my body and I need to negotiate.

Then I had to get back up.

That was harder.

My flat looks like a hurricane passed through. I have no clean clothes. Things need doing everywhere I look and I am so fucking tired of having to calculate whether standing up, lifting an arm, making food or putting something away is worth whatever invoice my body decides to send afterwards.

And this morning, for a moment, I genuinely thought:

Fuck it.

What if I stop trying?

What if I go back to the exhausted, foggy version of me?

Not because she was better. She absolutely fucking wasn’t.

But at least when my brain was buried under that fog I wasn’t this painfully aware of the distance between what I want to do and what my body will actually let me do.

That’s the particularly shitty joke in all of this.

My mind is clearer.

I fought for that.

And now I get a front-row fucking seat to everything my body can’t manage.

I know the data.

I track it every morning like a diligent little scientist studying the world’s most irritating longitudinal experiment.

HRV 53. Night HRV 38. Pulse 70. Thirty-three minutes deep sleep.

I know the mechanisms. I know about recovery and regulation and energy debt. I can analyse patterns, compare numbers, explain why the Pensioner might be demanding back pay and probably bore someone senseless with the details.

None of that helps me get off the fucking floor.

Understanding the invoice doesn’t make it affordable.

And I’m tired of being reasonable about it.

I’m tired of turning every bad day into information.

I’m tired of looking for patterns.

I’m tired of making adjustments.

I’m tired of treating my own existence like a systems problem that might finally behave if I can just find the correct fucking configuration.

Today I don’t want another theory.

I don’t want a silver lining.

I don’t want to hear that recovery isn’t linear.

I fucking know.

Today belongs to the why-me’s.

The what-if’s.

The fuck-it’s.

And the horrible little question underneath all of them:

Is this really worth it?

I’m not answering that today.

Because I know what the answer will be tomorrow.

I’ll eat.

I’ll pace.

I’ll track.

I’ll adjust.

I’ll put another load of washing on.

I’ll continue.

But knowing that doesn’t mean I have to manufacture hope for today’s version of me.

I’m not depressed.

I’m not giving up.

I’m angry.

I’m exhausted.

I’m grieving how fucking difficult ordinary life can be while simultaneously doing everything I can to make it less difficult.

And somewhere underneath the anger is something that hurts more:

What if this is it?

What if I do everything right and it never becomes easy?

I don’t know.

That’s the truth.

And today I don’t need someone to turn that uncertainty into optimism for me.

I need to be allowed to sit on the fucking floor for a moment and say:

This is unfair.

I’m tired.

I hate this today.

Without adding but…

No lesson.

No inspirational ending.

No brave little bow tied around it.

Today is hard.

I don’t know if it gets easier.

And I’ve earned the right to be fucking angry about that.

That’s it.

That’s the whole fucking note.