ME I choose to survive

While you are getting up and going to work
ME, I am in agony and paralysed
While you are driving around in your car
ME, I am struggling to get my toes to move
While you are wondering which delicious coffee and pastry to try next,
ME, I am struggling to figure what is safe to eat on my sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, wheat free, hydrolysed fat free, alcohol free diet
While you are enjoying a pint or a glass of wine or a gin and tonic or an infinite number of cocktails,
ME, I am struggling to work out if it is safe to drink tap water or bottled water
While you are going shopping for clothes and enjoying the choice of trying on the latest fashion
ME, I am struggling to find any clothes I can wear at all that will not hurt me
While you are splashing on your perfume and enjoying the delights of skin and hair products
ME, I am struggling to find a soap I can use just to wash with at all
While you are laughing, chatting, enjoying the ordinary social banter of life
ME, I am tormented and deteriorated to a spasming jelly by any voice at all that floats across my space, living in total isolation from contact with ordinary people.
While you are going to meetings, spouting opinions, listening to information
ME, I am unable to move or think or connect in any way with normality
While you are relaxing, having fun, enjoying a holiday or a weekend break.
ME, I am in agony, unable to go anywhere or do anything, or have a break from the sheer physical
slog of coping with a body in so much pain it cannot be touched, rest or get comfortable.
While you are enjoying all the wonderful myriad social family occasions that come along
ME, I am the empty gap no longer laid at the table
While you are unwinding reading a newspaper or the latest novel,
ME, I am staring into space, trying to sit upright and avoid becoming paralysed, unable to focus with fuzzy eyes and fogged blank mind
While you, with your health and your options and your opportunities are wondering what to do and feeling sorry for yourself
ME, I have no choices, every connection to normality broken, unable to choose anything except despair or survive
You have a wealth of opportunity every day, just being well
ME I choose to survive but it gets harder every day.

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