Fighting stuff? Something else I got wrong
23/10/24 08:36
Not too long ago I was talking about language on one of my vLogs. Specifically, I’d mentioned that I sometimes find language frustrating in certain contexts - in this context, the idea that you can ‘fight’ this disease. It irritated me. I kept wondering why people referred to it. What happened for the people who didn’t come through? Did they not fight enough? ‘Keep fighting’ people would say. It was a weird choice of words to hear for me. In my head you can no more ‘fight’ this disease than you can fight being hit by a train, and nobody would suggest fighting that.
Now I’m over a year in however I have a better understanding. I still don’t think you fight this disease, but that’s not to say there’s not a fight going on - there is, often every single day. For me the fight has been motivating myself to get up every day and get on with stuff, regardless. The fight to not give in to that want to sit on the sofa and disappear in to my own head, not consuming crappy movies that happen to be on.
Truth is I didn’t manage that for quite a while, however with some perspective I understand why - I was in a significant amount of pain, combined with getting care that missed the mark significantly. I spent the best part of a year being told I had something like prostatitis or an enlarged prostate (to be fair, I’m probably about the right age), and having naproxen and stuff thrown down my throat. Staying with the train analogy, that’s like trying to treat being hit by a train with band-aids. I’ll forgive myself for that, I think. Not seeing any progress, and getting worse, well, I struggled with knowing what was next, and looking back that was really impacting my mental health, not just my physical health. I was losing my natural positivity as I couldn’t work a positive outcome. I couldn’t see when my days were going to get better.
I’ve often heard from people that I can be relentlessly positive. That’s also something I’m not quite sure I understood. Giving it some thought, I think it’s actually the other way around - I’m not a worrier. I don’t tend to worry about things I have no control over. With things where I do have control over outcomes, I tend to work out what the outcome is that I want, and what I need to do to work toward that outcome. What I don’t do is then constantly worry about whether I’m going to get to that outcome or not - it seems such a waste of brain energy & time to do so, and fortunately it’s something I’ve trained myself not to do. Perhaps that’s where the perception of ‘relentless positivity’ has come from?
The last year has been a bit of education journey for me in some respects. This is one of those things I was wrong about - people can and do fight when they’re going through this stuff, but the fight isn’t what I thought. The fight is with yourself, and that’s arguably a tougher thing to process than fighting something tangible.
My fight goes on, but what I do know is this - today is a lot easier than yesterday, and it’s harder than tomorrow will be. Today that fight involves making some Thai curry - my favourite food in the world.
Now I’m over a year in however I have a better understanding. I still don’t think you fight this disease, but that’s not to say there’s not a fight going on - there is, often every single day. For me the fight has been motivating myself to get up every day and get on with stuff, regardless. The fight to not give in to that want to sit on the sofa and disappear in to my own head, not consuming crappy movies that happen to be on.
Truth is I didn’t manage that for quite a while, however with some perspective I understand why - I was in a significant amount of pain, combined with getting care that missed the mark significantly. I spent the best part of a year being told I had something like prostatitis or an enlarged prostate (to be fair, I’m probably about the right age), and having naproxen and stuff thrown down my throat. Staying with the train analogy, that’s like trying to treat being hit by a train with band-aids. I’ll forgive myself for that, I think. Not seeing any progress, and getting worse, well, I struggled with knowing what was next, and looking back that was really impacting my mental health, not just my physical health. I was losing my natural positivity as I couldn’t work a positive outcome. I couldn’t see when my days were going to get better.
I’ve often heard from people that I can be relentlessly positive. That’s also something I’m not quite sure I understood. Giving it some thought, I think it’s actually the other way around - I’m not a worrier. I don’t tend to worry about things I have no control over. With things where I do have control over outcomes, I tend to work out what the outcome is that I want, and what I need to do to work toward that outcome. What I don’t do is then constantly worry about whether I’m going to get to that outcome or not - it seems such a waste of brain energy & time to do so, and fortunately it’s something I’ve trained myself not to do. Perhaps that’s where the perception of ‘relentless positivity’ has come from?
The last year has been a bit of education journey for me in some respects. This is one of those things I was wrong about - people can and do fight when they’re going through this stuff, but the fight isn’t what I thought. The fight is with yourself, and that’s arguably a tougher thing to process than fighting something tangible.
My fight goes on, but what I do know is this - today is a lot easier than yesterday, and it’s harder than tomorrow will be. Today that fight involves making some Thai curry - my favourite food in the world.
