#10 If I Keep On Hiding

There’s a conundrum in writing about a chronic illness: tell the whole truth and you sound pathetic; keep the sad details to yourself and you’re not telling the truth.

The truth of a chronic illness like CFS or fibromyalgia or long covid is, well, yes, pathetic, both in the sense of arousing pity and in the sense of miserably inadequate (the two definitions offered by Google).

Neither sense is appealing for the person who considers sharing full descriptions of a chronic illness. So why bother?

I’m not sure why I feel a need to describe chronic fatigue syndrome, or why for the past year and a half I’ve hesitated so completely to do so that I haven’t published a single post on this blog. For one thing, I haven’t rested as I said I would, I haven’t stayed within that energy envelope (which, as it turns out, fluctuates wildly), and I’m not any better than I was a year and a half ago. I feel embarrassed, a failure. When I look at the day-to-day realities of my life, I see them as pathetic in Google’s second sense—miserably inadequate—and I fear that others will see them in the first sense—worthy of only pity. I do not want to be pitied.

I do, however, want to be known.

I listen to The Secret Sisters sing “If I keep on hiding, how will I be known / I keep telling myself that I’m better alone”* and I know that voice is mine. It’s easy to stay silent, hard to write, easy to avoid, hard to engage, easy to hide, hard to risk pity in the hope it might turn out to be love.

Image by Annie Spratt from Pixabay

* The Secret Sisters, You Don’t Own Me Anymore, New West Records, June 2017.