Spoonie Diaries

Friday, July 18, 2014
I had a bit of a realisation today. I have been coping with various illnesses and such for about 13 years now, and I write about those things occasionally. I try to be open and talk about things with others whenever they have questions. But I have never really actively looked into my health on my blog with the effort to help others feel a little less alone.

I want to show others that sometimes everything can seem really truly awful, and like it will never get better, but that there is always a glimmer of hope. It might not be a big one, but it could be that you still enjoy reading, or even the fact that it didn't rain while you had to be out. It might be that it did rain, but you needed a drink and couldn't afford a bottle of water at the time. It can be something ridiculous like the determined little snail working it's way across the floor nearby, or the beautiful leaf that somehow got stuck in your hair. But that glimmer of hope is there - you just have to learn to look for it.

Much of my issues with my health culminate into a general feeling of being in limbo. I was never quite sick enough to be in hospital or have a team looking for a solution for me, and yet I wasn't well enough to leave my house more than once a week. I'm doing better now, but in my darkest months I remember little outside of sleeping most of the day, watching a lot of Friends reruns on my DVD player, and reading when I could. Making myself food was ridiculously hard - I once updated my status on Facebook saying something like 'you know you're unwell when you have to sit down just after starting to make a batch of cookies'. I made jokes out of things, but the truth was that I was really struggling.

I'm hoping to start a new series of blog posts, in a similar vein to the ones I wrote for Tune In Not Out (find the first one here), but with a much more personal view of what I've been through, and how I learnt to cope with it. I don't want to make it seem like I'm being presumptuous about other people's lives and their own circumstances - to be clear, this is my experience. I am not a medical professional, nor have I done rigorous scientific studies based on my own experimentation with life. That aside, I do hope that what I write will be able to help some people, regardless of whether they are going through something similar to what I've been through or not.

The thing is, one of the biggest problems I had when I started to get sick was that I was surrounded by people who were, for the most part, perfectly healthy. As I got worse, I came across a couple of people with relatively similar experiences, but either we weren't that close, or I found them reluctant to talk about their experiences (which I respect). Really, I just wanted someone that I could talk to, or learn from, so that I knew I wasn't alone. So that's what this is about for me. I want people to know that they're not alone, regardless of what they're going through.

I will post the first official entry for this series next week. I hope you'll read.

4 comments:

  1. I resonate with this post of yours. I think it's important we all share our experiences, because sometimes doctors, nurses and healthy friends aren't so much in tune. I look forward to reading more from you.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you so much for commenting. I definitely agree - when we share our experiences, we give others a chance to connect with us and to realise they aren't alone. I hope my future posts resonate with you, too.

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  2. You are utterly perfect, just as you are. Thank you for sharing that with us.

    Did you mean to link to your first TINO blog post?

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    Replies
    1. Thank you <3

      I might have! Haha I am a bit all over the place right now. I will try and do so soon.

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