I’ve received so many messages of support that I thought a blog post was necessary as a way of replying to you all at once.
It’s now two day PMB (post mini breakdown) and I’m feeling quite mellow actually. Not chirpy, not sad and yet not numb. Emotions wear me out and I am quite quiet and slow and dazed. While I’ve been sitting and licking my wounds there have been tears of loss. Of relief. Of frustration. Of empathy for those in the same boat. Of despair. I am not myself. Not yet. My scars are emotional not physical, but those can be the ones that are hardest to heal.
Something gave way at the weekend. Like a crack in the wall of a dam that grows bigger and bigger until the wall gives way completely. And having to cancel plans to meet my friends just ten minutes before we were meant to meet was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say. Sounds silly. It was only coffee. But it wasn’t. To me it was my whole month. A token of normality.
After publishing I cannot win I had every intention of following through with my plan to give up and sleep. I closed my blinds, turned my phone off, curled up into a ball under my duvet and shut my eyes tight. I was desperate and defeated. It was a rash decision and I know now that I would have woken up to be so disappointed in myself, even though I was well within my rights to throw in the towel like that.
Not-so-little bro and his girlfriend saved me from myself. He came to see if there was anything he could do and to ask if his girlfriend could come up to see me because she had some flowers for me. She’d heard I was upset and stopped off to get them on her way over. The gesture made me cry again. But different tears. I was so touched. I was too proud to let her see me crying my eyes out in bed so I said I’d come back downstairs instead. I am so grateful to the two of them. Without that knock on the door I don’t know if I’d have been able to pull myself back from the edge of the metaphorical cliff. I would have jumped into a world where M.E. wins and each day after that one would have been void of light and hope.
Contrary to what I said I will not give up and I hope I never do. I will not berate myself either. My ‘outburst’ was not weakness. We are in no way weak, us sufferers. Well physically maybe… I’ve been here before and I imagine I’ll be here again but, just like the times before, I can reassess and rebuild myself again. I don’t need to be told I’m lucky in so many ways. I know that. That wasn’t what this was about; my supposed inability to see the silver linings.
Your messages and kindness and gifts of words have not gone unnoticed, they have just left me lost for words. I haven’t ever met the majority of you who I’ve heard from in the last couple of days, never chatted to you on the phone, never even seen a photo of you and I don’t even know many of your names. But, essentially, along with my family, you have held my hand and wiped my tears and assured me that you will continue to do so for as long as I need.
Thank you.
M.E. myself and I 