When I Feel Like I'm Watching the World Go By While I'm Chronically Sick

I was watching one of my favorite films today, “Half Light” with Demi Moore. It’s a romantic thriller set around a lighthouse. I won’t tell you much more because you really have to watch it if you haven’t already. Well, it got me thinking about:

1. How romantic the Welsh coast looked and the village where it is set.
2. I would really like to holiday there.
3. How nice it would be to be able to walk to the very top of a lighthouse, look at the view, with a gorgeous man by my side… without collapsing and having the paramedics come and rescue me half way up the bloody lighthouse!

They would have to rename the film “Half Dead!”

Anyway, I also thought about how isolated it must be on the lighthouse, and how the lighthouse keepers must have felt, watching out to sea all day, all alone, only getting to see people when they did their weekly shopping. In fact, that’s exactly how I feel — well almost, just no sea or rocks or ships… not right outside my window, anyway, that would be far more interesting.

We the chronically sick may feel like we are looking from the outside in most of our lives. We watch the world go by through windows, the internet or from the sidelines of parties, like wallflowers, because we came but have no energy to actually party.

It is so hard feeling like life is passing you by, hearing of how our friends are doing this and that and saying, “Ah you should have come, it was ace” — yep, and you reminding me I didn’t is ace, too.

My hubby makes lots of jokes about me and my “comfy chair,” like on a trip to the beach he said, “Ah, best be getting back, you’ll be missing your chair” or when I mentioned how nice it would be to live in the house that looked onto the beach: “Yes, then all you would need to do is wheel your chair down to the sea and sit with your laptop.”

Now I know he was joking, but behind the joke I feel there is a tiny bit of feeling that I sit in my chair all day every day (which I don’t, only on bad days, which OK, outweigh the good at the moment ) on purpose.

I got to thinking, I suppose my comfy chair is my lighthouse.

I look through the window most days, watch the passing dogs taking their owners for walks, the mail person nearly knocking said owner over on their motorbike.

I watch the birds come and go to the birdbath, which I monitor on a daily basis, like a good lighthouse keeper checking his… whatever he checks.

Then once maybe twice, I jump in my boat, well the bus, and go to the town to do a food shop.

Now this for me, the chronically sick one, is where I may socialize for the time, perhaps a coffee with a friend, a quick conversation with the shopkeeper.

Then I jump back in my boat… yes we have already established it’s a bus… use your imagination.

When I jump out of the boat, the tide is in and I have to climb the rocks back to my lighthouse.

When I carry shopping and try to walk it feels just like trying to walk against a current of water up to my waist, and the hill (OK, slope) up to my house may well be the rocky mountains up to my lighthouse.

So when my hubby comes home and says as he always does, “How have you been today?” I will reply, “Today I have been a lighthouse keeper!”

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Lead photo by Thinkstock Images.