This month is awareness month for CRPS/RSD which is one of the chronic illnesses that I have been diagnosed with. Therefore I have to highlight a chronic illness moment that I had today. This morning I started to cry over a sausage biscuit, but it wasn’t about the sausage biscuit. Let me explain.
Sometimes it Wasn’t About What Made us Cry
Picture if you will, a glass. This glass is metaphorically your emotional capacity. As things happen (big or small) your glass starts to fill with water. Throughout time, your glass becomes more and more full of water. Your water approaches the top and then there is one final thing that pushes your glass to overflow with water. When your glass overflows, you have an emotional breakdown in some form or fashion (how this looks is unique to the individual). Therefore, we may find that we end up breaking down over something that seems quite silly or small in our mind. For example, crying over spilt milk. The truth, however, is that it wasn’t about that last thing. It was the culmination of all the things that have been filling your glass.
My Sausage Biscuit Moment
So this morning I woke up and I was having an insane craving for a biscuit. Specifically a sausage biscuit. Due to my chronic illness and unknown reasons, I have not been able to eat much in the past 5-6 months and am in immense pain and get very sick when I do. There are few foods that I tolerate semi-well and on some days even those are not great. A sausage biscuit does not fall in the parameters of food I do well with and I became nauseous even considering getting one. I didn’t get one even though I really wanted to because I knew it wouldn’t end well if I ate more than a few bites. It was then I started to cry.
But the crying wasn’t really about the sausage biscuit. Truthfully, I don’t care about the sausage biscuit. This was just the millionth reminder that I can’t tolerate regular food or eat anything I want. It was a reminder that I’m now malnourished because I can’t eat, feel sick all of the time, and am exhausted. It was just the thing that made the water overflow from my glass.
So just remember, it may seem silly. You may give yourself a hard time for crying. I know I did. But then I reminded myself that this is a reasonable frustration in my very long and exhaustimg chronic illness journey and it wasn’t really about the sausage biscuit.
