'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw

The ending of any school holiday makes me feel a bit flat. Sad even.

I’m always reminded of how lonely my life can feel when everyone goes back to work after the holidays.

Everyone around me gets time off over Christmas. Most of the people around get time off at Easter and over summer. While they’re been off I’ve almost been like one of them. Almost. Only almost.

So I really like the school holidays.

But then they go back to work, and the school run, and their normal routines.

And me?

I don’t do any of those things.

My ‘routine’ sounds almost luxurious. But that’s only if you ignore the context of it.

I wake up when I wake up. But that’s because alarms of any kind send my poor poorly body into mild shock that takes a good while to recover from.

I don’t have to rush out to work. I don’t have to log in on a computer in a home office. But that’s because I am unable to work in any capacity. Still.

I don’t make plans with friends for the weekend. I have two things on my calendar for this month and that’s probably enough, in terms of exertion.

So my time is my own. Except, it’s also M.E.’s; a partnership I did not sign up for that apparently has a concrete contract, from which I cannot extract myself.

The end of the holidays is when I always feel at my loneliest and most isolated. And of course I’m not well enough to do much about that. I can’t pop out to see friends, or join clubs, or volunteer. And needing to remain somewhat shielded from the risk of covid, and particularly during flu season, has made my little world even smaller.

So I come here. To this tiny corner online where there are lots of us in very similar situations. And it does help a little. I hope being here helps you too.

IMAGE: Anna is sitting on a teal sofa wearing a bright orange dress me pink cardigan. Her face is out of shot. She’s holding a travel mug of coffee (because she has travelled to the sofa!) James Norbury’s The Journey is next to her.