There will come a time where you’ll feel able to share your joys without adding a caveat or disclaimer as to how those moments of joy were able to come about.
Times you grant yourself the permission to shed the weight of having to explain and justify and prove every little thing about your invisible/chronically ill life.
It’s taken me over a decade to stop over-explaining at every turn. I still have to delete the sentences I’ve typed about “What you don’t see in this image is X, Y, and Z.” I’ve learnt that I don’t always owe anyone that explanation. The people I follow online have taught me that.
Sometimes I just want to share the joy. You know from living like I do, that a photo only ever shows a snippet of time. If you’ve been here long enough you know nearly every post and every photo is taken way ahead of publishing them.
It’s taken over a decade to ignore the few who seem to purposely misinterpret what I share online; strange people who take pleasure from trampling over others. It’s taking longer to quiet my own voice; that tells me “People won’t believe that you’re as ill as you say you are if you don’t write it on every post.”
It feels so freeing to allow myself to share without a breakdown of the behind the scenes logistics.
IMAGE: Anna sitting on the floor is a bright blue jumpsuit. She’s holding a cup up to her mouth. She’s in front of a floor-to-ceiling length window with the sea beyond.
M.E. myself and I 