It's two and half years since I got better, but I still feel like I've got a lot to figure out about this new life. When I first got sick, I think it took around that long to move from being scared through to a place of contentment - and it took periodic reviews of my activities to keep me there. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised it's taking a long time this time around, too. It's a big change!
I think one trouble is that I still don't have a good idea how much energy a lot of things will take. Recently I went to visit a friend in Takapuna. I spent about two hours with her, maybe an hour or so each way in travel time, and I rested for about an hour at her place before coming home. I'd expected it to take basically the whole day, so wasn't unduly distressed at the two hour visit taking five hours - and we had a really good time together :-) What I hadn't expected was being incredibly wiped out almost the whole following day as well, so suddenly my fun two hours had cost me almost two entire days...
And then I felt stink, and lonely - if visiting one friend 'costs' so much, how can I ever get around to visiting all the people I miss? Time already feels so tight.
That was probably mostly because my expectations are still all a bit all over the place. After all, no one else gets to do things that take two whole days all that often, either! But I hadn't realised that was what this would take.
That's kind-of prompted a bit of a review of my time, though. If things that matter so much to me take so long, I really do need to take steps to make sure they can happen at least sometimes!
