Yesterday’s Capacity Is Not Today’s Contract

There was once a merchant whose donkey carried bags of salt to market. Their route took them along the same road and through the same shallow stream, day after day. One morning the donkey lost his footing in the water and went down. By the time he scrambled upright, much of the salt had dissolved. The sacks sagged against his sides, and the burden he had carried into the stream was considerably lighter when he came out.

The donkey noticed.

On the next trip, when they reached the stream, he remembered his good fortune and deliberately lowered himself into the water. Clever fellow. He had discovered a system. Unfortunately, the merchant had also changed the cargo. This time the donkey was carrying sponges.

The sponges soaked up the water.

Instead of emerging with a lighter load, the donkey staggered out carrying far more weight than he had carried in.

Same donkey. Same stream. Same maneuver.

Entirely different Tuesday.

Yesterday, Apparently, We Could Do That

One of the more irritating features of fibromyalgia is that the body occasionally lets you believe you have figured it out.

You go grocery shopping and come home tired but reasonably functional. Excellent. Apparently we can grocery shop now. You make dinner afterward. Maybe you wash your hair. Perhaps you spend a couple of hours with someone and do not immediately need to be carried home on a plank.

Naturally, you make conclusions.

Then you attempt roughly the same thing three days later and your body reacts as though you have crossed Nebraska on foot carrying a piano.

This is confusing enough when you are the person living in the body. It becomes even more interesting when other people are keeping records.

But you did it last Tuesday.

Yes. I remember Tuesday.

Tuesday was lovely.

Apparently Tuesday I was carrying salt.

Then Someone Loaded the Sponges

We tend to think of ability as something fairly stable. If I can walk a certain distance today, I should be able to walk it tomorrow. If a shower takes this much energy, presumably tomorrow’s shower will cost approximately the same.

This is sensible when discussing appliances.

Bodies are less cooperative.

Every activity begins with whatever the body was already carrying. How did you sleep? What did you do yesterday? How much pain was already present before your feet hit the floor? Is the weather changing? Have you been sitting too long, standing too long, talking too long, thinking too long? Did you spend three hours somewhere noisy pretending that fluorescent lights were not slowly eating your brain?

Sometimes there is an obvious explanation. You slept badly. You overdid it. The weather changed. You had an unusually demanding day before.

Other times there is nothing you can point to. You wake up, put your feet on the floor and discover that the Department of Internal Affairs has revised the regulations overnight.

No public comment period was offered.

But You Did It Last Tuesday

The trouble with fluctuating illness is that yesterday’s ability can become evidence against today’s limitation.

Other people do it, certainly. But eventually we learn to do it to ourselves.

I went out last week. Why can’t I go today? I cleaned the kitchen yesterday. Why am I exhausted after getting dressed? I walked farther than this before. Why am I stopping now?

That is where the unpleasant questions begin creeping in. Am I becoming lazy? Am I giving in? Should I push harder? Have I somehow made myself less capable by acknowledging that I am less capable today?

There is a peculiar kind of self-doubt that comes from living in a body that refuses to reproduce its own results.

If the limitation stayed exactly the same, at least we could draw a nice tidy line around it. Here is what I can do. Here is what I cannot do. Thank you for coming to the meeting.

Instead, the line moves.

Research on fibromyalgia has repeatedly found that patients describe symptoms and function as variable and difficult to predict. Flares do not always arrive with a neat explanation attached. Pain, fatigue and functioning can change from one day to another, and the unpredictability itself makes ordinary planning harder.

The inconsistency is not evidence against the illness.

The inconsistency is part of the illness.

A Good Day Is Not a Contract

I think this is one of the traps of a good day.

We treat it like a promise.

There she is! The old me. The capable me. The woman who can shower, run an errand and have a conversation on the same day without requiring emergency rations afterward.

So we make plans.

Then morning comes and that woman has apparently left the country without forwarding her mail.

It feels as though the body has taken something back. But it never actually promised to repeat yesterday.

Yesterday’s capacity was information about yesterday.

That is all.

This matters because a good day should not become evidence used to prosecute us on a bad one. Nor should a difficult day erase the fact that yesterday really was easier. Both things can be true.

The donkey did not become a worse donkey overnight.

Someone loaded the sponges.

Stop Measuring the Stream

From the outside, people tend to measure the activity.

It is the same grocery store. The same shower. The same staircase. The same two-hour visit. The same walk around the block.

So why should it cost more today?

Because the activity is only part of the equation.

The load matters.

The same person can perform the same task at completely different physical cost on two different days. That is one of the hardest things to explain about an unpredictable body because so much of what changes is invisible.

You cannot see poor sleep sitting on someone’s shoulders. You cannot see yesterday’s exertion. You cannot see the nervous system that has apparently decided today that clothing seams are a hostile act.

You only see the stream.

We feel the sponges.

Revised Terms and Conditions

I would dearly love my body to issue a morning bulletin.

Monday: Walking available.

Tuesday: Walking available. Stairs subject to additional charges.

Wednesday: All services suspended for reasons management declines to explain.

Thursday: Unexpected improvement! Please make several foolish plans so we have something to discuss Friday.

Unfortunately, no bulletin arrives.

So I am learning something less satisfying but probably more useful: to meet the body that actually showed up today.

Not last Tuesday’s body. Not the body I had twenty years ago. Not even yesterday’s surprisingly energetic creature who started making plans on my behalf.

This one.

What is she carrying today? What will this particular load cost? What can she do without turning today’s achievement into tomorrow’s punishment?

I will still guess wrong. Sometimes I will think I am carrying salt and discover halfway across the stream that somebody has switched the cargo.

But I am trying to stop arguing with today using evidence from yesterday.

Yesterday’s capacity was never a contract.

Reflection Question: 🧽 What if the question isn’t why I can’t do what I did last Tuesday, but what this body needs from me today?