I don’t use the phrases “Good Day” and “Bad Day” anymore. Outsiders have no understanding of what that means. They apply their own definition to those things and their own definitions do not include ever-present, debilitating symptoms.
Instead I’ve learnt to use “Easier Day” or “Harder Day”, with “My Normal” as the in between. It seems again that the careful use of language helps my cause that little bit. And my cause remains getting/helping others to understand, merely because that makes my own life much easier.
Today is an Easier Day. I am still the type of sick that those without chronic illness would be shocked by. By those of us who live with symptoms every day, crack on as best we can when the symptoms give us that little bit of relief; a slight lessening of severity.
It has been so long since I’ve felt like me; my true self. It’s been so long since I’ve looked like me. The pallor, slumped posture, dead-eyed, and lacking in any kind of oomph has dominated since the end of 2020.
But today, there’s a little bit of life again. Not the same amount as the Anna from 1988-2010, but I am sick of drumming that point home. Anyone who applies that version of Anna to my life in 2021 is very slow on the uptake!
So today was an Easier Day. And it is the hope that there’ll be another day like this in our near future that keeps us going.
Wishing you Easier Days too.
M.E. myself and I 