It’s M.E Awareness wWeek and on the 12th of May it’s M.E Awareness Day, where a light is shone so brightly on this condition, you can no longer dismiss it as invisible.
M.E had been a permanent fixture in my life for the last 13 years. Since the age of 15 it’s something I’ve lived with, survived with, battled with, fought against and eventually found my flow with. I have had periods of living a more “normal” life where my symptoms were still ever present but certainly more bearable, and long, all consuming periods of being desperately ill and barely surviving from one day to the next.
I have never given up hope that a full recovery is a very real possibility. I still live in hope and work harder than you could ever imagine each and every day to ensure that this will not be my ever after.
If you’d like to have a peak through the looking glass into my story via my blog here. If you want to see what life is really like when you don’t see me and therefore you don’t truly see M.E, I urge you to watch ‘Unrest'. If sitting through a 90 minute film doesn’t interest you then perhaps I could encourage you to watch the new 30 minute documentary on M.E on the BBC iPlayer which can be found here.
Education and empathy are key, so if someone in your life lives with this condition I appreciated how helpless you may feel. Taking the time to watch something like ‘Unrest’ and letting a loved one know that you’ve done so, is something so simple, but life changing to those who are left to face this battle predominantly alone.
It took me 12 years to get to a place where I was able to open up about my experience of this condition, and in doing so I have found friendships and a support system of the most inspiring humans who have changed my life for the better, probably without even knowing it.
A bigger account of Holly's M.E. journey can be found on her blog here and it's a brilliant read and very insightful into Holly's diagnosis journey and the stigma of the condition and her determination to succeed in education and her dreams of a future.
