#100HappyDays - Day 3

Today my best friend is my pillow

Ah, nap time.
That glorious time of the afternoon when I manage to stumble up the stairs and fall like the dead into my bed.
Perhaps a more accurate description of this interlude would be "rest time," as sleep isn't really required.
My body melds with the mattress, craving surcease from the relentless strain of having to work so dang hard just to hold itself together.
Thus is one of the many realities of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome; extreme fatigue.
Fatigue has a different quality than sleepiness; it overtakes my whole being, making each step a long slog through deep, wet, mouldering mud.
Fatigue becomes my master and is not to be disobeyed.
The ridiculously warm weather of the past several days - highs near 50 in Iowa in January! - afforded a great opportunity to start walking outside again. But walking is very much harder on my body than the recumbent exercise bike, and every time I resume my outdoor treks after a hiatus, fatigue mocks my optimism, adding its own malevolent prostration to my elevated pain and flaring fibromyalgia.
The only thing I can do at times like this is rest; not necessarily sleep, just cease most activities and lie down as often as I can.
It's easy to feel kind of down when this happens. I hate the extra burden this puts on my family. I hate that I can't take my dogs to the park. Cook supper. Do much of anything.
That's the thing with EDS; you have to take the good days and make the most of them, while keeping a keen eye on saving enough of yourself back to be able to function the next day.

So, in the spirit of focusing more on the positive, today I am embracing my nap time. I love my pretty pillows and the way I become a cat-magnet whenever I lie down in bed, often accumulating 3 or 4 of our resident felines around and top of me.
Yes, today I am cranking up the electric blanket, grabbing a good book, and communing with my best friend - my pillow.