Hmmm, well this post may be a lil different than usual but I need to get it off my chest and know that most people with chronic condition/s will understand.
Summer is upon us. Here in England it has been scorching for a couple of weeks. All I have heard and seen via social media, outside and from talking with people how hot it is and how they love/hate it. There’s a huge diversity between the love and hate, yet they have no choice but to go out in it.
This is the first summer I have been fully unwell and housebound, and I am finding it a bit difficult.
I want to be outside in the sun, not directly in it but to go to the harbour side, sit outside a pub, meet family, friends go out with them and enjoy the long days and get a lil tan. But obviously it’s no longer an option and I have to say I am sick of hearing how others are doing all I want to yet complaining about it.
Does that sound harsh? Yes, maybe but it’s true. It’s not so bad in the winter, no one is out, there are no fetes in the park across the road, none of your friends meeting to sit watching the boats, world go by, no music festivals in the park, no outside unless you’re hurrying to a destination to get inside into the warm. But this total isolation indoors has been very difficult for me, and I didn’t expect it to be.
I’ve never liked the heat and was always complaining about the scorching weather, having to be here, there, everywhere in it all the time.
Now I wish I had the option. I wish I could complain about it, be searing hot, but be outside none the less. For the first time in many months the urge to walk, be outside has been overwhelming and I have felt myself become down about the whole thing, despite my usual resilience to unhappy thoughts and feelings.
It’s really difficult to see people via pictures, statuses not only enjoying themselves but their lives. To be at the beach, the park . Even just walking, something that is becoming more impossible for me to do. I want to feel the sun on my skin, my body as I walk, i want to be able to go out by myself and not have someone push me.. To be alone and sit and watch the world go by as I used to. To sit under a tree and read a book as I used to. To go anywhere alone, to be free and feel the freedom of walking.
I have been very unwell for the last week, and at times I haven’t been aware of what time, day it was just getting up to take my meds, eat and gratefully fall back into a fitful but mostly pain free sleep. I have welcomed sleep this week, it isn’t as painful as being awake, moving, trying to think clearly which I haven’t been able to do much of.
I woke yesterday with the clearest head I have had in a couple of weeks and felt I was turning a corner. For a few hours I didn’t feel the exhaustion of my body, the pain was bearable and I felt optimistic. Then by 1pm it kicked in again, the mind numbing, body paining every cm of my body feeling as though I was slowly but surely crumbling from the inside out. I took all the pain, muscle meds I allow myself in the afternoon and gladly crawled into bed and shut my eyes, happy to shut everything out and fall into blissful, undemanding sleep until the evening.
I am very pleased that my head is clearer, even if my body is still being annoying.
It’s very difficult to talk about how crappy I am feeling about the inability to go out. I don’t want to make my nearest and dearest feeling bad or defensive that they have the option. It’s not that at all. I’m glad they can go out, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel as though they couldn’t in case it upset me. It doesn’t upset me at all. It’s my own inability that is making me feel crappy about it, that I feel very isolated and as though I haven’t adjusted to the summer as well as I thought I would.
I am very surprised at how I feel, I thought I was past all that. The being mostly housebound was something I had accepted. And it is, but the recent weeks of sun and only being able to watch others being out in it, or told about it has been very difficult for me. And knowing that this is probably how it’s going to be for the rest of my life, the non summer activities, is something I am going to need to accept. And I have no doubt I will, but everything takes time and by next summer I will have hopefully adjusted.
Fibro and M.E 