ME/CFS Week: The End

Apologies for the delay, this was supposed to be posted yesterday (Sunday) but that was not possible due to circumstances beyond my control.

So it's the final day of ME/CFS week. I hope that some of you have learned something about ME/CFS from these posts, or at least had it brought to the forefront of your mind for a few days. Regardless, I'd really like to thank everyone for reading (even if you only read one or two of them) and for sharing them on Facebook. It really means a lot to me and others with the disease that you did.
This post today is going to be short and sweet. There's a lot left to say about the illness and how affects the lives of sufferers, but so much of it is specific to the individual that I don't feel it's my place to say. After all I don't speak for every person with ME/CFS.

Being sick doesn't always mean being sad. Everyone has to overcome things in their lives. For some people it's illness or disability, for others it could be family troubles, conflicts, trauma or any number of other things. At the end of the day we must acknowledge the problem, deal with it, and either move on or (if it's ongoing) lessen its impact. That's exactly what we do with illness, too. People look at how little we can do on a daily basis and say "Oh that must be terrible, you must be miserable" because they're thinking of it in terms of their lives. The truth is that when living with something like this you adapt. You leave your job or your school, you stop your hobbies. It sucks that you have adapt that way, but that's life. Sympathy and understanding can make it suck a lot less, and can also help to make you feel better in the times when you really do feel miserable about it. Pity is likely to make you feel worse and stop you from opening up to anyone.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention other invisible illnesses. I've explained before what they are and I've been trying to mention them throughout my other posts. The reason for this is that a lot of the things that apply to ME/CFS also apply to many other invisible illnesses. It's an important thing to acknowledge. After all, you may only know one person with ME/CFS but there may be a dozen other people you know with invisible illnesses that you're completely unaware of. These people all deserve the same understanding and sympathy as those with ME/CFS or, as I said above, anyone else going through something.

We are battling a disease. We did not sign up to fight willingly, but were drafted against our will to wage a war that most other people seem oblivious to. It's not honour, glory and medals we're looking for. We're not doing this because we believe in it, we're doing it because we weren't given a choice. All we want is help and understanding. We're not special, we're just people.