This morning I woke up feeling tired and sore. Plus, our new neighbors were having a birthday party at 7:00am! I tried to keep sleeping but wasn’t able to and that made me feel a bit grouchy. How I wished they would be quiet! If only I had earplugs!
After trying to sleep for two hours, I decided to just get up and start the day’s work. Unfortunately, I found that something was wrong with my body. I was exhausted, my body ached, my muscles felt heavy and it took about 10 times more energy than normal to do everything.
Decontaminating didn’t seem to help and I started to suspect that maybe our new neighbors had introduced some contamination into our air. Brett suggested I try walking up the hill and sit at the picnic table several campsites away. I agreed and my suspicion was confirmed when I seemed to feel a little better. Bummer! We’re going to have to move!
When I told Brett, he went into the office building to see if the campsite further up the hill was available. Thankfully, it was! I was too tired to do much to help move and Brett was really sweet about it. He told me he would take care of it so that I could go rest.
I walked up to the new campsite and sat down. I found that I was too tired to even sit up so I just laid down on the picnic table. I closed my eyes trying to forget all the work I was supposed to be doing… No use adding stress to sickness.
Eventually, I got up again and forced myself to get the bare minimum laundry done. I couldn’t bear to fall behind! I really needed to keep making progress on my family’s clothes! I was feeling quite weak though and had to use an empty laundry tub to fill the other tubs in manageable chunks. That way I didn’t have to carry too much water all at once.
By the time I got the load up on the line I was so exhausted I felt like crying. I decided I should probably shower and call it quits. I hadn’t decontaminated since we switched spots and the cross-contamination was probably still affecting me.
As I was getting the water heated for my shower, I really did cry. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I felt so awful! I didn’t even think I had enough strength left over to shower.
“Why does this keep happening? I hate the unpredictability! To think that any moment some moldy new campers can come, make me sick and force us to move! I’m so tired of this! I wish we had our own land!”
I finally mustered up the courage to shower and after I was done I crawled into bed. My dear husband made dinner for us and I spent the rest of the evening in bed. It felt good to rest!
Today was really hard, but as I was reflecting on the day, it struck me that a bad day of mold avoidance is way better than the “good days” I had in Portland or Ithaca. If I had, had a day like today a year ago, I would have considered it an unusually good day!
So even though it wasn’t fun, I have a lot to be thankful for! The locations effect has completely shifted my energy baseline so that the kind of crushing exhaustion I faced today doesn’t feel normal anymore. That’s incredible progress!
By the way, Brett and I made a beautiful PDF of my favorite resources for suffering souls. I created the content and he made it look fancy with his superduper graphic design skills. It’s available for free to my email subscribers. Click here to sign up and receive 5 Resources for the Suffering Soul.
