I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about spoons.
The “Spoons Theory” of autoimmune disease is brilliant. I hand you some spoons, which represent units of energy, and we talk through a typical day. Every action costs a spoon, because people with things like fibro and lupus and MS and so on, require a lot more energy to do even the simplest things. Sometimes even the simplest things are not possible. If I hand a neuro-typical person 12 spoons and ask them how to spend them over the course of their day, they might not even consider that getting out of bed, getting dressed, getting breakfast, getting to school or work or wherever they may need to go, would cost any spoons at all. They’d get to work and be halfway through their morning before having to spend any spoons.
People with depression and anxiety also have a limited number of spoons. Aging people, neuro-divergent people, people with chronic injuries or other pain, people in stressful situations, people with Long Covid … Well, sadly I could do this all day.
And not everybody starts every day with the same number of spoons, either. One person might have fifty spoons, while another might have seven.
I used to have a lot of spoons, but apparently I left them behind somewhere. I have fewer and fewer spoons-to-spare.
Which is related to, but not quite the same as, fucks-to-give. I have to conserve my fucks, because often I don’t have the spoons to give a fuck.
All of which is my convoluted way of saying, how’s your spoon-o-meter reading these days? Do you have spoons left over at the end of the day? Or do you even have any spoons left by lunchtime?
I don’t know what happens to the spoons we lose. Maybe they’re like lost socks in the dryer, and they turn into mate-less Tupperware lids or wire hangers in the back of the closet. Maybe they wear out and get broken and turn into future archaeology. Maybe there’s an international ring of spoon thieves.
I really wish I knew the number to reorder some replacement spoons, because I have shit I want to do. Living in energy conservation mode all the time is not really living. Maybe we can start a Little Free Spoon Library, where people with more spoons than they need can leave a few for people who don’t have enough.
Is it like money? Do you have to spend spoons to get spoons? Some of us may be completely screwed.
It’s funny, when I am in my sound therapy studio working with a client, I have spoons to burn. I feel like a spoon factory – but it doesn’t seem to last. Why can’t spoons be like love? The more you give the more you get? I will happily share my spoons with anyone who needs them – but I have never been told where I can go to get some loaner spoons to use until I can get my original spoons back. Do you know? Is there such a place? Is there an online form? Go to spoons.gov and request your replacements? I so wish I knew.
Sorry, fam, no solutions today, just trying to laugh at this rather unpleasant spoonless feeling. Maybe it’s the weather, and in a couple months I’ll miraculously find all those spoons under the couch, in the garage, fallen behind the fridge … Gods I hope so.
Good spoons to you.