Everyday Sketchbook

Today is Severe M.E awareness day. To mark the occasion, here’s a little drawing I did a few years ago.

I’m currently over two years in to a particularly horrible relapse which was triggered by a really unfortunate situation where I tried to support a friend who needed help. She was in a bad situation and I did infinitely more than I should have done over the course of many weeks to try to help her out of it, and fell seriously ill in the process, so had to stop and rest. Her response to this was to ditch me when I could no longer help her and then start aggressively blaming me for her problems while I was completely incapacitated and couldn’t even feed myself. That was two years ago and I’m still in bed 98% of the time as a result.
The total mental and physical exhaustion of this level of relapse was enough on its own without the psychological pain of losing someone I thought was a friend, who I paid such an astronomically high price for helping.
I don’t think people understand how high a price we pay for trying to operate above our baselines. This doesn’t stop us wanting to try, but sometimes it can cost us literal years of our lives.
There is STILL no cure - still no treatment and still no pathway for support for people in the U.K with severe M.E.

Few humans have done as much for the world as this remarkable man has in his time here on Planet Earth, so this week I would like to wish an extremely Happy 100th Birthday to Sir 🌷🌿