Yesterday, I had a bad day.
Actually, this whole frigging week has been a bad week. It was hard to tell if it was the weather, or if I was getting sick. It felt like a cold, but often times, it can be hard to tell. I think it was probably a lethal combination of weather, a cold, and feeling run down.
I was exhausted and frustrated.
Even after 8 years, getting sideswiped with a sudden relapse, whatever the cause may be, is still depressing. I mean, really, let’s be honest, there’s nothing to cheer about when you get sick. No one has ever thrown a party because they’re sick. (Or at least not in my knowledge – if you know someone who has, kick them for me.)
I designed this website to help people. I went through such hell trying to figure out how to cope with being sick, and I never wanted anyone to feel the same way. But I think that in my efforts to help, sometimes I’m a bit overbearing.
I’d like to involve a bit more of my own past in this blog. I mean, this whole thing is really an experiment, and eventually I’d like to move it to its own self hosted site, and to start offering CFS coaching services, to help others dealing with this and give them more personalized advice.
But its almost too harsh right now, too impersonal.
So today, I’m going to talk a little bit more about me.
I’m an artist. I work in acrylic, and paint mostly English landscapes and people. I love to paint people. I’ve been sick for 8 years, and boy, has it ever been a learning curve. I’ve been through everything. About 2 and a half years ago, I nearly killed myself. I didn’t know how to cope anymore, and I felt like I’d lost everything. I felt like God was poking me with a big pointy stick, and I was tired of it.
Somehow I didn’t do it. I think I wanted to protect my family – I couldn’t hurt them. Either way, I made a choice that day to never let the icky stuff win again. I wanted a better life than the one that everyone else had picked out for me. I was just supposed to live at home with my parents forever, a dependent. Help with the household chores when I could, but mostly just sit there.
I did not want that life.
I wanted something bigger and better than that. I wanted a life that I was passionate about.
And I see so often other people with CFS wanting the same thing, and not knowing where to turn. And I found so many of the coping resources out there to be inadequate. They just didn’t address all of the issues that being chronically ill can bring up. I wanted to create a resource where people could turn to for help. And the CFS Ninja is the result of that.
I wanted to create something that was fun and hopeful and empowering. That made people with CFS or ME or FMS feel like there was something better out there. But unfortunately, I forgot to add in my own personality. I’m a complete goofball, and you don’t often see that in my posts.
I was so involved combating all the crappy advice out there and saying things straight up, that the fact that I’m a generous, compassionate, gentle dork kind of got lost. So I’d like to reintroduce that aspect of me.
So I’d like to say that, if you’re out there, looking for help on how to cope with your Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and you feel like you don’t know where to turn and none of the advice is very helpful, I’m sending you a hug. Everything is going to be alright, I promise. We’ll get through this together. There is hope. There is help.
Even if today you feel like crap and you don’t even know when you’re going to feel better, and you’re scared and you’re worried and it just seems so overwhelming, there is still hope for you. Some way, somehow, you’ll get through this, because hell, you’ve gotten this far right? You’ve been so brave so far. You’ve had so much courage.
I believe in you.
