About the heat, which for me is not just a high temperature, but an overload of the whole body.
Rolety i cień.
Lato zamyka oddech.
Jesień już śni.
The summer I never look forward to
Every year I observe how many people look forward to summer. They are waiting for the sun, long days, high temperatures, holidays and the opportunity to spend time outside. For many, it is the most beautiful time of the year.
For many years, I have been counting down the days until autumn.
Not because I don't like light or nature. I love walking (but only if I have a goal for it), sitting by the water or watching the sunsets. Summer itself has never been a problem. The problem is the heat.
For many years, I thought that I simply had a worse tolerance to high temperatures. That I was less resistant than others. It was only after the diagnosis that I began to understand that my nervous system reacts to them completely differently. This is not an ordinary feeling of heat. It is an overload that covers the whole body and gradually deprives me of the ability to function normally.
My world shrinks into one room
When the temperature starts to exceed the limit that my body can still handle, my world shrinks very quickly.
The safest place is a darkened room.
The roller shutters reflecting UV rays are covered all day long. The fan works almost non-stop. Next to me is a bottle of water and a spray of cold water, which I use to cool my face, neck and hands from time to time. I drink much more than usual, but at the same time I almost stop feeling hungry. Instead of energy, drowsiness appears. It happens that I sleep a large part of the day, because my body seems to be trying to limit everything that is not necessary for survival.
From the outside, it may look like a regular sitting at home.
For me, it's a survival strategy.
A heat that cannot be described
The hardest thing to explain is how I actually feel about the heat.
It's not just a high temperature.
I feel as if my body is heating up from the inside. As if the heat does not stay on the skin, but penetrates into every cell of the body.
My skin starts to burn as if I had been in the sun for too long, even though I often don't use it all day. The touch becomes unpleasant. Every piece of clothing feels too heavy. Sometimes, despite the extreme heat, I get chills.
A headache appears.
Thoughts start to get tangled.
It's getting harder and harder to keep my attention on one thing. I lose threads in the middle of a sentence. A little distraction is enough to not remember what I was doing. I feel like my brain is gradually slowing down.
In addition, there is drowsiness, nausea and a complete lack of appetite.
Suddenly, preparing even the simplest meal seems like a task beyond your strength.
It's not a question of resilience
A few years ago, I tried to fight it.
I told myself that others function normally. They go to work, meet people, ride bicycles and sit in restaurant gardens.
So why can't I?
Today, I don't ask myself that question anymore.
Because I know that it's not a matter of character or willpower.
I'm not lazy.
I'm not exaggerating.
I'm not dramatizing.
My nervous system simply reacts differently to overload.
The more I try to pretend that everything is fine, the more I pay for it later. Sometimes for a few more days.
I listen to my body instead of fighting it
One of the hardest lessons I learned after my diagnosis was to accept the fact that I don't have to function like everyone else.
I don't have to prove to myself or anyone else that I can do it.
If my body says, "stop," then stopping is not a failure.
It's a responsibility.
Today I know that closing the blinds, turning on the fan, drinking another glass of water, cooling the skin with a cold spray or taking an extra nap are not a sign of weakness.
It's my way of taking care of myself.
Because I understood something very important.
For most of my life, I tried to force my body to live by the rules of the world.
Today, I prefer to live by the rules of my body.
And since I stopped fighting him, he has to scream much less often.
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