Baby Steps

I have been watching a lot of The Great British Bake Off, because right now I can’t cope with anything that requires concentration or emotional investment, and GBBO is lovely. Everyone on it is so nice. It’s stress-free, and I need stress-free right now.

Something I’m still having trouble coming to terms with is the subjectivity of how I feel. We’ve upped my cortisol and blood pressure medication, and I feel… better? At least, some days I feel better. And by “I feel better”, I mean I don’t feel completely awful all the time. I can sit at my computer or lie in bed and not be making noticeably laboured sounds when I breathe, which is a nice change. My digestion is doing pretty well, which is a wonderful change. I ate Mexican last night! It was delicious!

However. I need to remind myself that while it doesn’t feel like this is much progress – I’m still exhausted and headachey a lot, I still need to be in bed a lot, and whatever is going on with my blood pressure and heart when I stand up is still happening – it is progress. I’m not having to go lie down after two hours at the computer because my blood pressure is making my head ache being upright for such a short time. My resting blood pressure has come down (although I’m apparently having nocturnal hypertension, which is… fun. In a not-fun way). It’s progress. It doesn’t have to be big, impressive progress for it to “count”.

This is a problem a lot of chronically ill people have. Our progress is often small, or our good days are small, and it doesn’t feel like enough. If I say “I baked some scones today”, that doesn’t feel like much, does it? But it’s a lot for me right now, and I need to acknowledge that.

Heck, I’ve been thinking about the freeforms I have in the works, for the first time in literally months. That’s huge progress. I haven’t had the energy to think about writing or roleplaying in months, so the fact that I’ve been thinking about my monster games and my Stargate game is amazing to me. I haven’t done any new writing, but I’ve thought about it. It’s something. It’s progress.

I’m allowed to be proud of that progress. It doesn’t matter that it’s small bits of progress; it’s progress, and I’m doing well to be making my little baby steps.