I don’t live in the same world you do. I guess, technically, no one lives in the
same world as anyone else as we all perceive things differently and have
different experiences and different friends and so on and so on.
What I mean is, I don’t live in the real world. And I haven’t for almost two years now.
Two years of my social contact being limited to whomever I’m
living with and carers. Two years of not
going shopping whenever I feel like it.
Two years of hardly ever seeing my friends. Two years of not walking to the corner shop
or chippy three minutes away.
Since my M.E. got worse, I have lived in my own world. I’m connected to the rest of the world
online. I forget that other people don’t
read blogs or watch Youtube videos. I
forget that you haven’t been following the #ESAendgame on Twitter (which you
should by the way). Even if you are
chronically disabled and housebound like me, the chances are we still don’t
inhabit the same online space as the interwebs is an incredibly large place. I forget that my world is vastly different
from yours. And when I go back into your
world, the real world, for a moment, I am struck by how out of the world I am.
When I’m alone in my room I am reading and resting and
writing and resting and watching TV and resting and playing Sims and resting
and going online and resting. This is my
reality and I pretend I’m okay with that, because it’s not like I have a
choice.
But I’m not.
I still dream of getting a part-time job; of being able to meet
up with friends at the pub; to go clubbing and dancing; to walk around the
grocery store (I’m too short to reach the top, but in a wheelchair I’m too
short to even see the top). In general I
just dream of living the same as everyone else.
I’m finding it difficult to know what to write about on this
blog. I know that this is my space to do
whatever I want in, but I just don’t know what I want to do with it. I don’t want to end up whining and
complaining about my life as that would only have a negative effect on me. But I struggle to stay positive all the time
because the truth is that I’m not. I’m
depressed. I am lonely. And I constantly
wonder ‘Why me? What did I do wrong?’
And the fact that I don’t live in your world just makes it even harder
as I no longer know what the real world is like.
Perhaps one day I will be able to see the world you live in
once again. Until then I’ll do what I’ve
always done; I’ll keep writing and I’ll keep hoping.
2 comments:
Just write what comes to you - I express myself in the negative quite a lot on my M.E. related blog because it's one of the few places I can be real and honest about how my life actually is, and how I feel. I find it relieving to read how others stuck living with chronic diseases feel, I guess because it makes me feel less alone. I don't even care if they are writing negative stuff... A massive part of our lives IS negative and if we don't express that, we deny a big part of ourselves.
Thank you so much for your comment. I do express all my negative feelings in my personal diary, and totally understand where you're coming from when you say that it makes you feel less alone when reading how others feel. However, for me, I am fighting almost every day to not let my depression win, and often reading negative posts (the occasional one is okay, but when it's all the time) just makes it harder to cope with. By no means do I wish that people would stop writing negative posts as if that's what helps them then that is great, but for me, writing too much negativity gives it a power over me that I would rather just avoid. But at the same time I want to let others understand how it feels etc.
Seem to have gone into a long-winded rant type comment, so will stop here methinks!
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