Life Lately | The Guilt, Oh The Guilt

Disclaimer: This post is not happy and positive. Sorry, not sorry.

Anyone who follows me, or reads this blog will realise there has been a little bit of a lull in my posting. And somehow feel like there is an explanation due as to why.

There are good and bad reasons to why I’ve been unusually quiet in my sharing of my experiences of living with chronic illness. And they may feel like excuses and not at all significant in the big scheme of things, but they are honest and truthful – my primary goal here.

I thought about not sharing, about ignoring the nagging gut feeling inside to explore my own feelings as to why I’ve been MIA.

1. Work is very busy but going really well!
2. I haven’t had much time at all to write.
3. I feel utterly shattered lately and it’s not improved much as time as gone on.
4. I’ve been wondering what on earth I am doing with this entire website, ambition, purpose lately and that’s sunk me into a small pit of self-doubt.
5. Coupled with the fact that I am currently very homesick, hasn’t helped much.
6. I’ve been waiting for funk to end. Sadly, it hasn’t and I know I have to pull myself out of it.

Genuine reasons when I look over my words and see that a lull isn’t a bad thing. But to me, a lull is a very bad thing. I know I need to stay in the game of health blogging so that I am relevant and known. I also know that I need to live my life in order to write about the experiences of those who live with a chronic illness. And dammit, I spent far too much time in 2016 lying around in pain, miserable and sick, that living what I want to do right now! But, alas, the guilt.

The guilt. It’s been eating at me.

Not in a huge way, not even in a way that I realised at first. But slowly, I found myself not missing blogging. I felt free. To begin with. But my time slot for blogging in the evenings during the week fell away when I felt ‘too tired’ to do any of it. And I mean anything; even cooking myself dinner. The self-care was dead in the water. I was severely fatigue and even my Vitamin B12 injection didn’t work right away. It took a couple of weeks to give me a kick-start. Something I realise I will now have to consider for forever. For the first couple of nights I had off, I felt relieved. But the quiet weekend that followed, I felt an incredible guilt of not wanting or feeling the need to blog. I started to feel like something was missing. And writing was it.

Sharing is my way of coping with my health condition.

Talking about my experiences – my ‘adventures with a chronic illness’ – helps me normalise my life. In a world where I am feeling incredibly different  – but in a way I actually accept and like – I need for my situation to always be my normal. And when I struggle to talk, to communicate, to share; I feel anxious. I feel low. I get unhappy and my positivity fades away.

I hate that part. Because it means I am internalising my feelings, my thoughts and I feel like something inside is eating me up. My mental health suffers greatly when I ‘forget’ to use my blog as my outlet.

I need my writing for me.

I need my writing for reflection.

I need my writing for peace and clarity.

I need my blog.

It’s never an easy path back to feeling in a good place to share. But sharing this low part is a part of the process. It’s a road back to ‘my normal’. It’s a step when I didn’t think I had a step forward to take.