Traveling

I've been in New York this week, first staying with a friend from home in her itty bitty Bushwick apartment and now visiting a friend from school at his house in Park Slope.  I've had a decent amount of energy, but the thing about traveling, especially in a group, is that everyone wants to do everything all the time.  There are five of us staying at Arthur's place, and while they are wonderful friends who are very understanding about my illness, it's still difficult to constantly have to be the one to ask if we can sit down for a bit or grab some food because I'm feeling lightheaded.  Spending all day running around the city has also underscored the problems with being far from a bed/couch/other space to lie down.  I nodded off in a bookstore chair the other day, but with orthostatic intolerance, the quality of rest is tremendously better lying down than sitting up.

It's also been a little stressful dealing with symptoms at Arthur's house.  At home, in my dorm room, or at the house of a good friend or relative, people know the deal.  They understand why I need to rest, and I don't feel awkward taking a nap on the couch or taking a break to lie down.  I only met Arthur's mom a few days ago, though, and I hadn't gotten a chance to explain the whole chronic illness thing before I found myself wiped out and needing to spend the day in bed yesterday.  I was actually able to talk to her about my Dysautonomia last night, but that was after I had been resting all day.

I go back and forth on the judgement thing. On the one hand, if I don't jump to give up my seat on the bus and get dirty looks, I've gotten to the point where I am prepared to accept people's ignorance without launching into an explanation.  But when it's a friend of a friend, or a parent of a friend, or a classmate, or someone else I might see again, I feel an overwhelming need to make sure they don't think I'm lazy or selfish.  If it's a situation like the one yesterday, I feel pressure to act better than I feel.  Even if I had been feeling terribly last night I wouldn't have asked to eat in bed, because that would have been too awkward.

The other worry this trip has caused is that traveling in Europe will be incredibly stressful.  I'm studying abroad in Italy next semester, and I've been looking forward to taking weekend trips, but my experience this week is making me anxious.  Traveling without a plan seems like the thing to do for young college students, but is that going to leave me exhausted in the middle of a city where I don't speak the language?  What if my travel companions (who I'm assuming will be people on my program, none of whom I know well now) want to do more than I am able?  Will I hold them back?  Will they pull me along when I'm feeling miserable?  I am choosing to remain optimistic, but there are concerns.  There is one thing I can bring to the table as a travel buddy, though: I will make sure we never skip a meal, because if we did I would basically collapse into a puddle of goo.