>Okay world, I’m saying it here. It’s time to take myself in hand and get control of this miserable illness. I’ve tried and tried and it never works, but I hate giving up and giving in. There’s a bit of a fighter still left somewhere down there in my psyche, and it’s screaming to get out and DO something about this. Don’t know exactly WHAT to do, but anything is better than nothing.
One of the worst issues I have is isolation. Isolating myself, that is. I never even go down to the lobby to get my mail anymore, unless I am going out for some other reason as well. I never go out on my own anymore, either, so unless a friend comes over and wants to go somewhere (and I really only have one friend who comes over more than twice a year or so)……….well, here I am. Just here. It’s been the main issue the entire ten years I’ve lived in this little box of an apartment. The world is out there, and I am in here. It’s like my own little prison cell. I have no outdoors that isn’t a public place. The street. That’s it. If I go outside, I’m in the public MAIN street. No little balcony, or porch or yard. I dont do well in public on my own. I think I have some sort of social anxiety disorder, maybe because I was made to feel….what’s a good way to put it?….unacceptable, stupid, not quite ‘quite’, there’s another word but it is eluding me….from the time I was very young right through until I was divorced. You know, that ‘fatal flaw’ that you are just to stupid to know what it is but that is clearly obvious to everyone around you.
So anyway…I don’t go out. I don’t like to be looked at. Of course, once I AM out, I am gradually more comfortable with it, but it is hell until then. It’s worse now, since the effects of being ill have taken a toll. I am old, and fat, and my hair is a disaster, and I walk like a drunk. I just want to be invisible. Where is science when you need it?
So my idea was to start my list of ‘things to do to take control of this illness’ with getting outside every day. Which I already know will not happen, because I will talk myself out of it every time.
Help, anyone out there. Does anyone have any ideas, hints, tips, solutions to offer someone like me? I don’t seem to be succeeding very well on my own. I did try, at the beginning. I tried exercising to regain the muscle strength I lost when I became ill. Within weeks of getting sick, my strength just vanished, and I could no longer do things I normally did without a second thought. I had to stop buying heavy groceries like juice, or things in cans, because it took too much effort to carry them from the car to the apartment. I tried going out and meeting people. I realized that however friendly and talkative shopkeepers may seem, what they really want is a customer, not a friend. So I just kept isolating more and more. I tried. But the more I did, the harder it got. The pain just kept getting worse and the more it hurt, the less I did.
I’m really a friendly person, I’m not mean, I always smile at everyone and say something pleasant, I’m polite. I like to have fun and be silly and make people laugh. But that’s one me. The me that rules is the isolated, timid, ‘omg, why would anyone want to talk to me or even look at me’ person. I want it to be different, but I don’t seem able to make it happen on my own.
Is this a whine, a rant, or what? I just wanted to state my plan to take charge of myself, and it turned into this all by itself. Ah, well. It is what it is, right?
strangely peculiar 