The Mermaid Life

From being a little girl, my mother used to refer to me as ‘the little mermaid’ and she still does to this day. It fits in to my love of Disney, but mainly originates from the amount of time I spend in water. My baths range from a half hour, to beyond 4 hours. If I go on
holiday and there’s a pool, it’s guaranteed that I’m in it. If I have a choice of exercise, it would be in the local pool. Why? The only place I’m not in pain is in the water. It’s soothing. It’s probably the only place that I’m completely content.

Some people must be wondering how on earth I manage to spend that amount of time in the bath tub, my brother asks me frequently, and it’s basically due to the relief I feel from the water mixed with having the Netflix app on my phone. I will sit and watch episodes of my favourite TV shows, films, YouTube videos and scroll through Tumblr for hours on end while I soak.

But what makes the best bath? I have a list of things. It starts off with turning on the tap. As I’m incredibly sensitive to changing temperatures (as my fibro friends will relate with), my first tip is to get in the bath while it’s running. This is to get your body used to the temperature slowly as the bath runs, and you can adjust the taps as you need. My other suggestion is to start off with a cool bath, and heat it up once you’re in – this may mean letting some water out, topping up, letting water out, topping up (which working for a water company, I shouldn’t advise) but NEVER just get into a super-hot bath unless you fancy your body tingling horribly and having to hop out.

My next tip is to use essential oils. I use a few in my bath that just seem to help with my aching; they open up the sinuses and do a whole world of good. Essential oils are made up of minute molecules that are very easily absorbed through the skin. The components of essential oils, once absorbed, interact with bodily systems and, depending on the essential oil, can stimulate the immune system, aid cell growth, help eliminate toxins,
kill bacteria and viruses, and so on. The ones I currently have on the go are Black Pepper and Juniper. Neither smell like you would expect, they have a lovely, almost sweet, kind of smell to them. I often use them both together (three drops of each mixed with milk) in the bath and can highly recommend both for a soothing muscle relaxing bath. More often than not, I will pick there up from Holland&Barrett (every time I’ve been it’s been a 2 for 1 sale on them too which is nice). Keep in mind that to use essential oils in the bath, you will have to mix them with something first. Personally I use a tablespoon of milk per 6 drops of essential oils, though you can buy carrier oil or use any seed based oils (rape seed oil for example) to mix them with. This is a must as if you put the oil in the water on its own, the oil will just create a layer on top of the bath and potentially irritate or burn the skin as the water heats it up; adding in the milk (or carrier oil/seed based oil) means the essential oils will mix in with the bath water.

My next MUST HAVE to make bath time all that more enjoyable is some kind of bath bomb. The obvious for this is Lush. If you follow my Instagram you will see photo upon photo of different bath bombs and what they do to your water. My top picks would have to be The Experimenter which smells quite spicy (not like curry spice, but like...Christmas spice) but then settles to something more mellow...like vanilla-ey. Phoenix Rising is another favourite, the colours are beautiful and makes your water super silky soft, resulting in your skin feeling amazing. As a general rule, though, if you mix any bath bomb with the Sunnyside Bubble Bar, (you’re just going to be bathing in pure ungodly beautifulness with sparkles and glorious water (don’t forget the glitter, the glitter is da bomb ;])

I could go into bubble baths but there is so many brads, and smells, and types of bubble bath that I fear I would never reach the end of this post. So really my tips are: get in the bath while it’s still running, or at least warm the bath up gradually; essential oils are fabulous; bath bombs are magical. Happy bathing! 

You are you, that's truer than true

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? I can tell you what I see. I see a body, as real as it can be. I see two arms, two legs, facial features and everything in between. I assume that’s what people see of me as it’s what I see of other people. From the outside, looking completely healthy has its disadvantages and its advantages.

You know what? I’m not even going to go into the disadvantages of people not being able to see you’re ill because those of you that suffer know all too well what the struggles and stigmatised issues there are with invisible illnesses. So no. I’m going to focus on the positives.
The best one for me is people treat me the exact same as they would anyone else. For me, that’s fantastic! They see Carys. Nothing more, nothing less. Though I’m sure that people who know me better than a first impression may see me as more: caring girlfriend, trusted friend, untidy daughter, girl that dies her hair a lot, the arse that complains when it’s hot outside, that sort of thing. But even so, they still see Carys.

Don’t get me wrong. I definitely have those days where I feel like utter crap and just feel sorry for myself, and want others to feel sorry for me and take it easy on me that day. I want them to know EXACTLY how I feel so they can just leave me be, or (gently) throw chocolate, painkillers and hot water bottles at me. But in a strange kind of way, I’m also glad that that is not how it is. I still have targets in my life, and if everyone, including myself, took it easy on me every time then I don’t think I’d be as strong willed and motivated as I am today.

I don’t want people to give me what I want because they feel sorry for me; I want to earn what I achieve and feel like I really did accomplish something). I don’t want people to worry about me 24/7. I don’t want to be out with a friend and them instantly freak out for me when they see a flight of stairs. As I’ve said before, it’s incredibly lovely for people to be aware of things that may be challenging and have an understanding of my capability; that really does warm my heart and make me all smushy with ‘AWWH YOU DO CARE! YOU ARE A WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING’. As I heard once ‘you’ve made it through all of your worst days so far, so you’re doing great’, so a set of stairs will not be the end of me – worst case, I’ll find an elevator or a very strong person to fireman lift me (now wouldn’t that be a picture).

In a roundabout way, what I’m actually trying to say is understand who you are. Look at yourself as a person and not a patient. You are not your illness; you are strong, you are a person and you are you.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” – Dr Seuss