Whatever you do, don't mention the "War."

I don’t intend my blog to be filled with all things related to CFS, it is a huge part of my life but it isn’t my whole life as it is part of me but isn’t all of me. Obviously as I am affected in so many areas of function it is hard for it not to be a regular subject. I’ve just returned from a few days with my wonderful parents, I stupidly decided to take the bus as I hoped I was well enough, it’s only a few miles away and when I am “well” enough to take the bus now and again it makes such a difference to my life. It’s related to independence, ego and dignity. Such a small thing comes to mean so much with this illness. Well I took the bus and then unfortunately spent most of my time feeling truly awful, and a lot of it lying down. I have left there feeling better in other ways though.

Before going to my parents I’d started to go a bit off the wall shall we say, psychologically, a taboo area us CFSers don’t like to mention, or only within safe circles. The illness is still viewed by far too many as a psychosomatic disorder so talking about the secondary mental effects of the illness is often not openly discussed. In fact I may well get a flurry of objections to this post. I want to make sure that it is clear I am talking about how the illness affects me, not everyone with my illness. I find myself alone often, which I really don’t mind at all, I am quite happy with my own company, but the illness is in its very nature isolating for those of us who are more severely affected and unable to socialise either via work or going out. In fact networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are a life saver for me when housebound, it means I get to have some social interaction as often as I am able to within the limitations of my symptoms. So a couple of weeks alone, with your own thoughts, day in day out, fighting difficult physical symptoms can play with your mind as I am sure you can imagine. This is a reaction to the situation I have been forced into by the illness not the cause of the symptoms. I find myself landlocked. 

However, being around my parents for a few days eased my mind, even though I did have to spend a fair amount of time resting, alone. Having that human connection brought me out of my own head. In the previous two posts I’ve written about my recent thought processes or should I say lack of, they have considerably calmed and here I find myself much more easily being able to relate my thinking. If any of you were in doubt of the forces fought with this illness then I would say to you it is a multi-thronged attack and until there is understanding of its cause I will have to fight off each one constantly, living in hope I will one day win the battle.