Back to Reality

This is where I need to be:

This is where I actually am:

Less escape more reality. That seems to be the order of the day.

I had a major chronic fatigue attack yesterday evening and suddenly lost all the feeling in my mind and body, falling asleep on the sofa even though I did everything to stay awake. The end result was that I did not have time to tell my wife not to cook the Omelette I was supposed to cook and instead for her to heat up her mum’s food and I would eat a ready meal. As fatigue got the better of me, and my wife’s constant rushing around meant we failed to communicate appropriately, she ended up cooking the omelette.

I was knocked out, lying on the sofa asleep in a daze, escaping in the world of dreams, and by the time I woke up she was in a right huff and dinner was ready. I felt nothing but guilt and anger, that I had not been able to tell her not to cook and that I was not healthy or energetic enough to support her. She did not hold back her true feelings and let vent how bitter she felt and how angry she was. She has had enough of the lack of routine in our lives (which is not entirely my fault).

Routine is almost impossible when you suffer from extreme IBS and CFS as you never know when you will need the toilet, have diarrhoea or fall asleep and lose your focus, concentration and alertness. I am trying everything I can to cure my psychical illnesses. All of the time that I am awake, relatively alert and not penned down by my debilitating symptoms, I devote to getting all the household chores done. I have no life of my own, but no matter how hard I work it is never enough for my wife. She badgered me about routine again. Her argument was that if she knew when she had to do chores she would not get so angry. She has a tight schedule after work as once she puts our daughter to bed she needs to focus on her never ending doctoral thesis. She does not have the time or energy to complete household chores on top of that. That is all true and fair. I know all of this and do everything I can to reduce her burdens. It would be great if someone cared about me and my won burdens as much as I do about hers.

I am forever creating new spreadsheets or word documents that try to plan our dinners, activities, lives and bring method to the uncontrolled madness that is our lives. It is not enough. So even after the success and then sudden failure of the food plan I had to waste time creating a weekly summary activity routine which set out on which days I would be expected to complete certain chores. It is irrelevant that I am usually too exhausted and ill to do the chores. If I do not do them no one else will and this will anger my wife.

I am typing these thoughts to clear my head in preparation for my impending career change programme call with my career coach, and I am also trying to gobble down my increasingly mushy and aesthetically displeasing healthy breakfast. Eating, typing, and sorting out my paperwork all at the same time, when I am still hardly awake, make for a bad mix.

Anyway I have to go now as I have just dropped diet cola al over my pants and keyboard. This is the result of the aforementioned bad mix. I should be sleeping but reality has forced me to wake up for my career change programme call. My coach berated me incessantly for not booking call 6 at least 1 month after call 5, when the calls should be weekly. I was overwhelmed by an ever growing mountain of other tasks and responsibilities, but nobody listens to you when you are too tired to shout loud enough and too fatigued to coherently explain your situation.

Times up. Once again.

Back to work.