Back in 1983, when I was only 13, my mother and I finally realized I was sicker than the doctors were telling me. They sent me home from the hospital telling me my tests were under control and I should be feeling fine. I wasn’t feeling fine. My mother complained to the doctors that I still felt sick. She wanted answers and they were providing none. So for 34 years, I’ve lived my life knowing something was wrong because I had flu-like symptoms and was exhausted. But I pretended I was ok because neither I, nor anyone else, understood what was going on. Standing or sitting up felt horrible so I fell to the floor every hour to lie flat. I would have went crazy if I couldn\u2019t lie flat and this happened on several occasions.<\/p>\n
Socializing of any kind were torture and I was unable to keep a job longer than a month. I dropped out of college because I didn\u2019t have enough mental or emotional stamina to get through the harder disciplines, even though my IQ and EQ scores were impressive. I had no stamina. I married, and with great difficulty, had one child. I could never try again. Pain and sickness were always with me, like a silent companion. Pain and depression kept me awake most nights. It felt like no one could possibly understand. Because no one did.<\/p>\n
Now there are a lot of us with ME\/CFS. Millions understand. But that’s little consolation for my entire life. I have learned to look at my sickness in the mirror and say, \u201cHello.\u201d I do not give it the time and energy it needs to grow into a monstrous size again in my life. I make it small. And when it kicks me, I reply with attention and love to make it smaller. It’s a spiritual thing, not feeding the monster. It’s the only way to survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS Back in 1983, when I was only 13, my mother and I finally realized I was sicker than the doctors were telling me. They sent me home from the hospital telling me my tests were under control and I should be feeling fine. I wasn’t feeling fine. My mother complained to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/michelle_b.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}