tired

I am tired. Not tired as in I have M.E. and part of that is that it makes me tired. I am tired in that way, don't get me wrong, but more than that I am tired of being ill. I have had enough of this now. I have had enough of the nausea, the crippling headaches, the muscle pains, the joint pains, the not being able to sleep, the overwhelming tiredness, the inability to do things, the everything else. I've had enough. Enough of my life. Of the life that having this illness makes me live.

Just recently I have been very aware that life has become one big front. I put it on when I walk out of the door, or when someone walks through the door. It occasionally lowers when the husband is around. Occasionally. Even he doesn't see the whole of the inside. Until yesterday. Yesterday saw breakdown. It saw the front go. I told him just how I feel. He learnt how I don't really see the point to my existence. With life how it is at the moment I can't help but feel that if I wasn't here it would be easier for everyone. For the darling one who has to live with me the worry and burden of care would be gone if I were no more. I don't think people realise the effect me being ill has on him, how he actually needs as much care and support as I do but it being less readily available to him coz I can't give it to him and to those outside of the two the us focus always more on me, the ill one. I've done that to him. I've given him that burden. I've left him without the support he needs. Its my fault. The hurt and suffering he goes through at the moment, that is because of me. Because I can't manage to have a well body. Because of me his life is not as it could be. Doesn't have the lightness and fun and laughter it could have. Its my fault.

And outside of the two of us, I don't fit in. I don't work. I don't mother. People ask how you are, hows your day been. The answer is boring. The same all the time. No-one wants to know that the total sum of my day was doing the washing up and putting some washing one. How dull. And so I have nothing to offer conversation. Nothing to make me good company. Unless I put the front up.  But managing this front is just too exhausting.

Oh I know when I am in a more well phase I can be useful for doing odd things, for making up the numbers, for being given the sympathy invite. And when that happens I have to build the front again so no-one sees the inside. If they saw the inside they wouldn't be interested. Oh maybe the first time they would have a listening ear, would cluck their sympathy. But when it went on and on, they would lose interest. It would exhaust them. But keeping the front up tires me. And I'm tired enough already.

So what to do. The husband now knows what is happening behind the front. He is happy to stick around and help me work it out.  But being outside the house without the front seems too dangerous. I just can't manage that. And keeping the front up can't be an option right now. My M.E. symptoms are too bad at the moment to cope with tiring nature of front building and maintaining, of being the person I'm not so that others don't have to cope with the person I am.

I have no answers. All I really want is mum to walk through the door with a fish pie and we can watch Saturdays casualty together and life can be how it was. When it was fun. When it was safe. When it was easy and nice. But that isn't going to happen. Darn those scientists for there lack of time machine making. For now I feel like I just need to shut myself away. To be me and my Marky. To not see other people. To not be putting a front on. To be real to how I feel. It is too exhausting to do that around other people. I am exhausted enough already without that.