I’m going to hazard a guess and say that most of you here feel removed from your peers, and that’s without even taking the still-ongoing pandem*c into consideration.
Well me too pals.
It isn’t something I feel all of the time anymore but I am still have a wobble about how I’m meant to join in with conversations when my life is a stark contrast to those around me.
My self confidence has returned, and grown, and then been lost again several times over the course of my illness, but I’m going through something of a ‘floundering phase’ at the moment.
I have no job to share tales about, no children to swap stories over, no speakable social life, no anecdotes to relay from my day…
There was a time when I could confidentially hold my head high, pull my shoulders back and declare that I’d been able to boil my eggs for lunch the other day, and I could say it with both immense pride and humour at how different my life has become.
But at the moment I just feel a bit lost with it all. There is so much I can’t relate to.
So few of us with chronic illness are living a life that’s even close to the one we imagined. The unsavoury things we experience daily are things no child grows up hoping for or even contemplating.
And yet here we are, having to endure this so-far-removed-from-normality existence.
I don’t feel it often but sometimes wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the morning commute, or the long queue in the supermarket as the main issues in life; instead of the too-unwell-to-attend-an-important-medical-appointment, or another day with no human interaction.
M.E. myself and I 