Chronic Illness

 Having a chronic illness is:

1. Have symptoms
2. Ignore them for years/not realise there's a name for what you go through
3. Have most medical professionals ignore/dismiss/gaslight you about your symptoms
4. Discover there IS a name for your Thing and advocate for diagnosis
5. Spend actual years jumping through ALL THE HOOPS and finally get diagnosed
6. Move on with life because, other than diagnosis, those medical professionals offer no help, advice, support, or signposting
7. Experience specific problems relating to your diagnosis
8. Research how to deal with said symptoms
9. Find recommendations online
10. Introduce those new ideas
11. Exacerbate something else entirely and, not only be unable to fix the initial problem, but give yourself another symptom (or three)
12. Realise that the new ideas you found are for typical bodies and you are a Zebra, not a horse
13. Get angry and buy a bunch of books on your condition in the hopes that they help
14. Repeat steps 7-11/12 ad nauseum

 

I have begun a routine of going outside every morning while the machine makes my coffee. 

On mornings like today, I wake up earlier than I would like but I am then rewarded with views like this. 

I greet the sky and the trees, say "hello" to the stars when they're there to meet me. 

I say "I love you" to the moon when I am graced by its presence. 

I thank the Universe, broadly, for too many things to list, open-ended gratitude. 

I stand and stretch and take several deep breaths of the fresh air. 

As I head back inside, I pause to thank my home. She has a name. A name that only I know. 

I then begin my day. 

 Now that my life - again - looks wildly different to what it did just months ago, I find myself - again - wondering where this blog fits into the whole scheme of things. 

I am compelled to write, I am compelled to share, but as my writings are now split between fiction and non-, I wonder if it's time to also split my posts ... to have different blogs dedicated to different things.

And then I struggle with indecision because the non-fiction I want to write about is extremely personal and I am debating writing entirely under a pseudonym for those works because they're about my life, my childhood, my traumas at the hands of others. 

Some of those people are long gone but some of them are still very much alive. 

I imagine the ones who are still alive would take some not insignificant offense to having their actions revealed to the vast number of one (1) persons who read(s) this blog ... and this is something I debate almost-constantly and what holds back a lot of my writing ... I'm kind of waiting for the remaining players in this saga to pass before I write my story ...

But that isn't "fair" to me, to the story inside my brain, inside my very cells that is crying out to be told, to be released, to be known. 

So, the questions I ask myself are: 

• Would I start an entirely new blog and literally not tell anyone that it's there? 
• Do I not blog about that side of my writing at all and just hope that it's published someday? 
• Or do I say "eff you all" and start peppering my non-fiction writings in here, too, offense-causing be damned?! 

It is said that if you wish for nice things to be said about you, you should do nice things in life. The people I am trying to ... protect(?) did some very not-nice things but I don't believe them to be entirely "bad" people. They, too, are borne of trauma and assaults of various kinds but, for myriad reasons, have been unable and/or unwilling to break the cycles in which they have found themselves. (Some don't even understand there are cycles.)

And what if the person I'm most desperately trying to protect is myself? What if the reason I haven't been able to write my truth while my abusers are still alive is because I know they will come for me (Proverbially and largely digitally. Physically, I am very safe.)

But the story still begs to be told. Hence the dilemma. 

I guess the real purpose of this post isn't to find the answer to any of these (and more) questions, but rather to get my teeth back into writing and sharing because I have to start somewhere, right?

Right.