TL;DR

Sometimes you can’t cook. You want to, but your body just won’t work right or the brain fog is so heavy that it feels like it is suffocating you. When this happens, try to be patient with yourself and your body.

MiniTip

Sometimes you can’t cook. You want to, but your body just won’t work right. It’s cramping or just won’t move no matter how much you tell it to. Your brain fog is so heavy that it feels like it is suffocating all the joy and energy from you. It’s hard to understand what you are reading, 1 tablespoon of cayenne. How many? 1, how many what? tablespoons. tablespoons of what? cayenne. How many again?

When this happens, please, I am begging you, be patient with yourself. This isn’t easy. Chronic illness is not an easy thing to deal with, and I know that for me, being impatient with myself just made me more and more depressed. “I hate my life” was my mantra every single minute of the day while I, on good days, sat in a recliner chair staring at a wall or, on my bad days, laying in bad staring at the ceiling.

On these days, try to not beat yourself up. Your body needs a rest. Your body is messing up, that’s no doubt. It isn’t doing what it is supposed to be doing for some (or a lot) of things. But it is trying with all of its might to keep going, to keep a balance that will keep you alive, and miserable, for yet another minute.

This is all easy for me to say, I’ve reached this point where I can be patient. And I still lose my shit quite often when it starts getting bad, so I’m not perfect by any means. But I know that my body has been with me through all of the traumas that I have been through, all of the difficulties I have faced, all of the friendships that started and ended. The cells have changed, but it is still the thing that has been there with me through all of that.

And right now, it’s failing, it has gastroparesis that makes eating difficult sometimes because my stomach is paralyzed and not pushing food into the small intestines. It isn’t absorbing important vitamins. There is so much it isn’t doing, but it was there for me every single bad day and good day, now it’s time for me to be there for it.

That’s my philosophy, anyway. And it sounds absolutely insane to me, but it is how I think about it. I had to separate my chronic illness from myself and hated it, not realizing that it was my body. My body has a chronic illness and so I am going to be patient with it, even on days that I can’t cook because I have a doctor’s appointment.

Be patient with yourself, with your body. I am only able to cook once or twice a week, though I want to do it more. But the brain fog gets to be so thick that it is potentially dangerous for me and for my family if I forget to turn off a burner or oven. This has happened more times than I can count.