Life with an invisible illness

 Hey everyone,

Todays blog post is going to be a bit different. As some of you may have seen on my instagram i post a bit about living with a chronic illness. I have even had a few people reach out to me and share some of their stories about their own struggles with invisible or just chronic illnesses in general, and it warms my heart that there is such a supportive network of others who understand how life can be difficult.

I really wanted to share with you all, just a small glimpse of the true impact of what living with an invisible illness can be like. Living with a chronic invisible illness is a CONSTANT battle. My days are restricted to 'is this going to hurt my body?', 'The weather has changed have i dressed with enough layers?', 'i did something out of the ordinary today will my body be sore tomorrow?'. These are just a few of the questions that my mind is constantly thinking about. i dress conservatively, not for any reason other than i have fear that if i catch a draft, i may spend the next few days in bed moaning in pain. I constantly have to think where i sit in a restaurant, am i too close to the door? is the draft from the air conditioner going to affect me? Simple tasks sometimes require a big effort and yet, to others who don't understand it looks like you dont try, are lazy or even that it's not 'that bad'. *EYE ROLL*

The amount of times i have heard 'its not that bad, there are people worse off than you', is quite frankly appalling and not at all helpful or incites motivation in fact it does the opposite. To be honest, i get there are people worse off than me, but by saying those completely insensitive remarks you have just degraded my pain, my battle and my struggle into nothing because if on a scale of 1-10 you aren't at the top end in the 'worst' category you should still be able to chin up and move on with your life. If anything to me, this just shows how ignorant people can be and honestly they are lucky that they have not had to deal with living with an invisible illness. Between managing doctors (Most of whom are really not helpful) and our own day to day lives i think the most difficult part is walking out into the world and constantly explaining to people, and in most cases it is an illness people haven't heard of before. It can be exhausting, and cause more negative ramifications than the actual invisible illness itself.

Having your life ruled by a chronic illness is not easy, it makes you feel mentally tired some days, and other days utterly exhausted from dealing with pain or other effects that impacts your ability to sleep, get comfortable and do anything to take your mind off it. Then you have days where you feel like it can be managed and will be ok, the point is, not every day is the same and not everyday is a bad one. But bad days happen, probably more frequently than most people who living with invisible illness would like to hope for.