A weird thing happened this week. For two and a half days I felt well. Really well. Maybe like people who aren’t ill feel. I slept deeply Wednesday night. That meant I could go to yoga Thursday morning. My attendance has been sporadic this year because I haven’t been able to maintain the capacity for a continual run at it. I did some blog drafting after. And attended an autistic society meeting online, watched Celebrity Traitors Final, which was magnificent, btw. Slept okay again. Friday I was able to go to my personal training session with T, who is a physio I found word-of-mouth after I got diagnosed with severe osteoporosis earlier this year. (That’s all three of us sisters now). We are trying to get me strong because it turns out when you have bad bones you need to get good muscles. Before it’s too late and all you do is fall and crack. I’m 60. Not too late, T says. Saturday morning me and ML went to get me some trainers for my sessions. We left without coffee because we thought it would be good to get straight out and have coffee there. In the car, even before caffeine, this unfamiliar feeling of total grounded happiness came over me.

This was my brain in a state of regulation. I’ve worked out that when I feel at my worst – indescribable fatigue plus a complete inability to sleep restoratively – it’s a manifestation of my nervous system being dysregulated. It mostly arrives with a shutting down of my executive brain function and intense, prolonged neck pain. I don’t want to speak for others, but for me, episodes get fuelled by c-PTSD, neurodivergence or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Or sometimes all three baiting each other. But from Thursday to most of Saturday this week, they left me alone.