When You're Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Chronic illness is for life.

That’s the hardest part of it, I think — knowing that there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel, and if one should appear, it’s probably a freight train.

When one has a cold, flu, or infection, you know that no matter how miserable it is, there’s an end. It will go away.

Chronic illness doesn’t go away.

It may be treatable… but treatable doesn’t equal better or even feeling relatively normal.

It’s like luggage. Ugly luggage that you didn’t even get to pick out and have to drag everywhere.

As much as I hate taking medications…it’s even worse not having them to take on a regular basis.

My sleep schedule is a mess and I think my body thinks afternoons are mornings now — mornings were the worst pain/symptom time of my days and now it’s afternoon/evening.

The Botox downswing is hell… but even more hell is knowing I can’t get my next treatment since I’ve lost my medical coverage.

Sick of being sick.

Sick of talking about being sick.

Sick of knowing others are sick of hearing about it.

Sick of it being my day to day and having little else to talk about.

Sick of knowing it’s for life.

Sick of being in the gray area of waiting and wondering when the next time I can get relief will be.

This is hard. Harder because I’ve had treatment for a while and now it’s gone.

I don’t know how I did this before. Maybe not ever having options before was better for me, or at least easier for me to deal with because I didn’t have that hope before.

All I know is it’s so damn hard to exist these days and to be OK with it. So hard to act like myself. So hard to care. So hard that no one around me really understands why it’s so hard and I can’t just deal with it and move on.

And I can’t understand how I can be expected to deal with it and move on while I have to haul this luggage 24/7, 365 days a year.

It’s there in the shower. It’s there hanging on me while I’m doing dishes, getting dressed, eating… it wakes me up when I sleep or keeps me awake.

No one else can see it weighing me down, but I feel it with every breath I take.

It confines me. It smothers me. It sucks my energy and my enjoyment of life.

Chronic illness is for life — but it isn’t so much a life as it is a life sentence without any possibility of parole.

I know I can get through life… but I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to smile and put on my happy face. I don’t have to pretend for anyone else’s comfort while I serve my time.

I just have to keep breathing. But sometimes that just doesn’t feel like enough.

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