Saturday afternoon. You've got tickets to go see a band tonight, bought several weeks ago. You've been feeling a bit down all week and looking forward to the chance to do something fun, see friends, take a break from the usual repetitive ennui of weekends. You're still really tired from a long week at work, a nap seems like the sensible thing to do - they're not just for kids and nannas after all. Wake up - why is it so dark - shit. The 5.30pm alarm came and went. Not much time to get ready. You don't think you can do this. It's hard, so hard when you ache right down to the bone and you feel like you haven't slept in years. But as you haul yourself out of bed to trudge down to the bathroom, there's only one thought on your mind. IT is back.
IT never truly leaves you, of course. Just long enough to trick you into thinking maybe real life isn't so hard, you've gotten stronger and got your shit on lockdown. Then you hear that slow heavy knock at the door - IT's here. IT climbs on your back, inside you, weighs you down so that each bone feels like it weighs a hundred kilos, every step takes more effort than you feel you can muster and each day becomes such a herculean effort that even making a toasted sandwich for dinner is beyond you because your desk-based job has destroyed you. And that's if you're even able to make it to work in the first place, which you nonetheless have to do if you want to be able to pay your bills. Sick leave runs out very quickly when IT comes to stay. And here's the real kick in the teeth about this whole deal: IT is invisible. You're the only one who knows it's there, who can feel that dread weight pushing down on you, crushing you. Like a reverse Pilgrim's Progress, you get up every day and slip on that invisible burden that is at once ephemeral and incapacitating. One foot in front of the other until you're ready to fall down where you stand.
You give embarrassed apologies to your friends because you're cancelling dinner plans. Again. Turning down yet another invitation for Friday night drinks, because the thought of drinking in a loud bar that will take you 40 minutes to get home from makes you feel ill and all you want to do is lie on the couch while struggling to exist. Work colleagues stop asking if you're feeling ok when you come back to work because pretty much every other day is a sick day. Or week. You can feel them watching you, evaluating you, wondering how sick could you really be anyway. The event invitations and inquiries into your wellbeing dry up, replaced by the conversational equivalent of the almost thoughtless half-nod you give to seeing someone you know in the street who you can't be bothered talking to. Oh it's you. You're sick again. That's unfortunate. Sure is a lot of weather out there. People start writing you out of the equation. The isolation is compounded until you've spent your 30th night in a row at home alone in a dimly lit bedroom, wondering when this will ever end.
It will end of course, as does everything. Life will go back to normal, or it will settle into a new normal. You learn to make a lot of concessions when you're chronically ill. Some things change irrevocably, and that's ok, because it has to be. You make do with what you've got - a humbling lesson, one of many you will learn. Some days are a write-off and some are so regular you could almost forget the truth. But you will always be looking over your shoulder, in the corner of your eye, at the end of the day and the back of your mind. Because IT is lurking there and if you don't pay your dues, IT will come and take them whether you're ready or not.
