Time for some updates about how I’ve been feeling and some recent realisations I've come to. I’m going through quite a bit at the moment: members of my family have revealed they don’t believe I’m ill, I’m upping how much I work AND, we are in the process of moving out! I’ve been pretty down about the first one on that list especially. It’s hard to live with someone that calls you a liar and disregards your pain. I can’t prove my pain, it doesn’t show up on scans, I can’t get them to live in my body and, after 3 years of saying nothing, it was strange to hear it come out of the blue. Maybe they’ve felt this way the whole time, maybe they were having a bad day, but it was horrible to hear and it set my mental health back quite a bit. Luckily, I’m moving out fairly soon and so I can escape the toxic energy that’s been created, however, I’m expected to carry on as normal for now which has been hard. I’ve spent the last year really trying to accept that I’m now chronically ill and getting over the grieving stage, so this news came at a pretty bad time and halted my progress with all that.
I went to see a dance show at Sadler’s Wells recently too, I love dance and it makes me happy to watch it. Well, it used to. This time I felt really detached and a strong sense of longing to dance again even though my body can’t take it. It was one of my favourite dance companies and one of the pieces they performed I LOVE. I have the soundtrack, I’ve seen it before and I studied it at school. It may have been because this came less than a week after the incident above but it didn’t feel great. I’ll be really sad if I can’t enjoy dance anymore, watching was my only way to stay connected to the art form so I’ll try again when I’m in a better headspace and hopefully it’ll feel good again. If I'm honest, I've struggled to enjoy a lot of things recently so I am assuming it's just a headspace thing.
Lastly, I've been noticing how little friends I actually have since leaving school and talking about disability. I don't have those people that message me to check I'm doing okay. If I see a new restaurant I want to try, I don't have anyone that I know that would be up for it. Most of my time is spent with my boyfriend, which is wonderful, but as we are going to be living together soon, it's good to have your own space and friends sometimes and I don't have that. I think people struggle to stay present for friends with chronic illnesses because it is so constant, and I understand that completely, it's just hard to be so alone. Some of my old friends are coming back from uni now and I've been trying really hard to reconnect but some have made it obvious that they have no interest in rekindling a friendship. The problem with being chronically ill is that I'm very much a homebody. I don't go out because I'm either too tired, working, or the activity has a high chance of hurting me so that I won't be able to work. It's such a careful balance to keep healthy enough to work that I haven't prioritised going places and I don't really miss going out. I'm an introvert who wishes she had some more extroverted tendencies. Sometimes I wish I had the energy and confidence to go out and see people but it's just not me. I'm a very different person now and have to think about how things impact my future daily.
Very soon I will be moving onto my next step and moving out. I'm worried as I'll have an even smaller support network than I currently have but, I'll be able to get away from some not-so-nice energies and start to try and create a space that feels like home to me.