Hidden costs

The MS experience is, absent the neurological nonsense, really no different than the basic human experience... only writ so large that you can't pretend it isn't happening.

It takes energy to walk around your workplace, or around the house. To go to the store. To get dressed up and go to dinner. It's just that with MS, you're acutely aware of exactly how much energy and effort those activities take, and that just the doing of those simple activities burns away at your not-always-that-extensive-to-begin-with reserves. I've had many trips to a restaurant where just getting there and being there took way too much energy, and I ran out of juice about two thirds of the way through the meal.

Of course, sometimes you "just gotta keep going." I don't begrudge the universe for requiring that of me, but I am painfully aware about just how much "just keep going" can cost me.

And this is something I'm struggling a lot with. When to push through and when to sit back. Of course, when you're at work and you gotta go from point A to point B, "pushing through" is your only option... but it always costs, and sometimes it costs a lot.

So, one of the gifts of MS is that I'm more acutely aware of every passing moment. Unfortunately, right now, what I'm most aware of within those moments is depletion, and how that depletion is increasing through each of those passing moments; and I'm currently watching that depletion rob me of activities I'd rather be undertaking than recovery, inasmuch as said recovery never quite seems to happen. Which is itself taxing.

There is a way through this desert. I just don't know what it is, yet. Yet—and that's important. There is an answer... I just haven't seen it yet.

But as Kino said in Kino's Journey, sometimes a traveler's most important tool is luck. And fortune favors those who pay attention.