“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.” – Doctor Who

Well, it’s been rather over a week since I wrote about something which has added to my pile of good things, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on the idea. Last week was rough for various reasons, and I found it very hard to make myself think about the good stuff. Yes it was there, but experiencing it and acknowledging and writing about it are two different things. I have a rule that if it hurts too much I stop, so I stopped.

Now I’m able to start again (because stopping doesn’t have to be permanent). And this good thing did indeed happen last week: I have a brain frog! It wasn’t my idea; it came from a joke made by someone in a facebook group I’m a member of, but it delighted me and I instantly started scouring the internet to try to find one. It was harder than I expected, but I succeded in the end, and now I have a beautiful yellow brain frog, which you can see in the above picture!

If you’re new to ME/CFS and wondering what the fuck I’m going on about, there’s a symptom that we call brain fog. It makes concentrating, processing information, reasoning, articulating and remembering (short-, mid-, and long-term) difficult to a greater or lesser extent. It’s a really difficult symptom to deal with because it makes everything so much harder. You’d be surprised how many activities require brain power!

And that is why I wanted a little plastic model in the shape of a brain with frogs’ legs. It makes me smile when I look at it – which the brain fog certainly doesn’t! It’s super cute and I guess it’s just a more light-hearted way of thinking about an incredibly depressing facet of the shitty illness I have. I think that sometimes visualising things helps me deal with them – a few months ago I named the Poisonous Tadpole, which screams WRONG WRONG WRONG when it doesn’t like something and floods my brain with poison. I kind of want one of those now, to go with the Brain Frog – between the two of them they seriously fuck my brain up!

May your pile of good things be added to this week.