ME/CFS: Feeling Trapped

Anyone who has ME/CFS knows how, well how shit it is really, living with this incredibly debilitating and frustrating illness. Despite this, I don’t want every ME post on this blog to be really negative and just an outlet for me to moan because I don’t think that does anyone much good. Don’t get me wrong, having a good old moan now and then to let everything out
can be great but when it’s constant it just brings you down more and everyone around you, not exactly creating the ideal environment to recover in. So this post

isn’t meant to be just an outlet for my frustrations but a way to hopefully shed some light on what I imagine is a common feeling among ME sufferers and one that I think is okay to own up to once in a while.

I’ve felt incredibly depressed and riddled with anxiety the past few weeks, not every minute of every day but definitely for the majority of the time. I’ve suffered from this before, especially with my anxiety which is due to many reasons which go way back but it’s been particularly bad and inescapable these past few weeks and apart from a few ‘triggers’, I just couldn't put my finger on exactly why this was, until today. Today has been awful. I’ve felt incredibly unwell today and increasingly depressed and anxious to the point where I’ve just had a bit of a meltdown on the sofa, mentally and actually quite literally, it is ridiculously hot today, anyone else feel so much worse in the heat? Anyway, during said meltdown I found myself sobbing and generally feeling sorry for myself when I suddenly wailed ‘I just feel so trapped’ and it was like a bolt of lighting had just struck me. That’s what it is, I mean yes sure there are plenty of things that are making me feel down such as actually feeling so constantly unwell and the anxieties which aren’t purely to do with the illness but I knew straight away that I had hit the nail on the head as to why it is SO bad at the moment.

I feel trapped, very trapped and in all sorts of ways. I feel trapped in my body, within it’s physical limitations, limitations which also make me feel trapped mentally as it’s very difficult to find an outlet of escape that I can physically do. If I were healthy I could take myself out for a walk down the beach, have a weekend away, go out with friends or even do something mundane like having a sort out to try and take my mind off it but none of these are options for me at the moment. I also just feel trapped generally in life. It’s at these weak moments when I just can’t believe this is my life. Where have the last seven years gone? I get frustrated that I’m nearly 29, yet I haven’t been able to achieve any of the things I wanted to by now or even experience some of the things I wanted to. This is what ME does to you, it traps you in a life and a body that you don’t want and at times it just seems unfathomable that anything will change but it has to. I can not and will not live my life like this. 

Despite what I said at the beginning of this post, this has been a rather negative few paragraphs but I think feeling like this and having my ‘lighting bolt’ moment has actually brought me to the realisation that I can not continue like this. I know that unfortunately it’s not that simple but it has given me so much more determination to just bloody get through this. I am terrible at sticking to a routine and doing a lot of the things you’re supposed to do to give yourself a chance to get better but feeling like this reminds me of just how much I do want to get better, to feel healthy, to have options in life and to get the life that I want.

Enough of my ranting for now and I promise the next ME related post will be much more positive and constructive!