A (love?) letter to my own body

Dear Body,

I want you to know I hear you.

I was pretty unimpressed when you wouldn't let us get out of the bath last night. This is something I've always worried about, but somehow I still managed to be surprised when it finally happened. I guess because you'd been behaving so well lately, you'd lulled me into a false sense of security.

I was pretty angry with you, Body. As much as I try to be Zen about the all odd things you insist on doing, this time you really pissed me off. And truth be told I was a bit scared. Yes, we have things in place to make situations like this okay... but all of the possible solutions still required either pain or embarrassment, and I just didn't want to deal with that. 
 
The thing is though, once it became clear we weren't going anywhere, and I made the plan to just top up the hot water and wait it out until you agreed to start working again, I realised this was your way of trying to make me listen. You don't have that many ways of communicating with me, do you Body? And so you tend to pick the ones that you know I'll take the most notice of - dropping my blood pressure so I have unplanned lie downs, making my limbs stop working properly so I have to stop moving, and of course our old friend Pain.

I know you think I don't listen, and sometimes you're right. I keep pushing you when you're telling me that you need to stop; that you need to rest. I haven't been doing that good a job of taking care of you lately, have I? I haven't been sleeping enough, or eating enough (though if you could ease up on the nausea a bit, that would help!) I've been making you do too many things, using up more spoons than we have, and I've been worrying and stressing out too much.

But I want you to know, I hear you.

We've been here before. At the start of the year, I didn't listen to you, and we ended up in a pretty bad state. I promise you, I've learned from that. You need to trust me, Body. Sometimes I am going to push you more than feels comfortable, but you need to trust that when I do I will have rest planned for you afterwards. Guess what, Body? We have the whole week off next week! And I'm going to do better on feeding you nourishing food, getting you to bed early, drinking enough water, remembering to take meds on time, and getting gentle exercise. I'll even give the relaxation stuff another crack too. In return, can you please just hang in there and not freak out? 

Ultimately, I know that you are just trying to protect us with all your over-zealous immune-system activity. Your methods are pretty are pretty flawed, but I know that somewhere deep down it comes from a good place. So really, Body, we both want the same things. We just need to trust each other, and give each other a break sometimes.

Lots of love,
Helen

P.S. Thanks for finally letting us get out of the bath without help. I really appreciate it xoxo

Little Miss Autoimmune