The Greatest Pretender

About this time last year something profound happened to me. While the event itself wasn't earth-shattering, my reaction to it pretty much defined how I related to the world at large for the next nine months. One afternoon I was standing in the kitchen when my husband, who after over a decade of our social life being ruled by my sickness, informed me he was sick and tired of flaking out at the last minute. He demanded, then and there, that I either commit to or cancel lunch plans with friends two weeks out. I stood there with my mouth agape clueless as to what to say. We both knew I was rapidly relapsing into an illness that didn't give me the consideration of two day's notice, let alone two weeks. But we also knew life wasn't only about me...

It didn't matter that his frustration was justified, or that I was spending half of the week too sick to function, or that two mature adults should've been able to resolve this rather superficial matter with a healthy dose of communication. All I felt was defensive, misunderstood, and that I'd failed him yet again. So I climbed onto my own private island of isolation and decided to resolve this problem all by myself. By punishing myself. I already felt so guilty over losing such a grasp on my health that I had to quit my job, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to exact my revenge. Against me. In that very moment, without a word, I decided to say yes to every invitation that crossed our paths. To further my self-retribution, I followed it up with the mandate that if I wasn't in the hospital, I couldn't cancel. Period.

Some days I was too weak and dizzy to stand, other days I hurt too bad to wear clothes. I had a few lingering, miserable colds that make good ol' fibro a thousand times harder to endure. Many days I woke up crying, feeling like I was fighting through quicksand just to get out of bed. Frequently I didn't sleep much at all and spent the next day in a miserable state of delirium. Sometimes I couldn't form sentences, my mind-mouth connection was so impaired. My body ached, throbbed, and pummeled me with relentless agony. Yet still I refused to cancel. Towards the end of the year I was so depressed I'd spend all day crying, then slap on makeup right before my husband got home in an attempt to conceal my suffering. Eventually so much smiling and faking my way through things and telling everyone I was fine, when I so seriously wasn't, eroded my mental stability. Guilt and self-loathing may have been the motivators that got me into this mess, but it was my angry bitterness that kept me there.

So much pretending my kind of sick didn't matter made me outrageously resentful. I started to view life as a punishment, and the people in it as my captors. By denying myself the very essence of my reality, I eventually began to feel tortured. Trying to fake my way through my middle-class lifestyle, full of unburdened people concerned with carefree activities, was making me overwhelmingly bitchy and remarkably hostile. And refusing to take care of myself had only made me sicker. Clearly, my solo journey through an ugly game of pretend had sucked my body, mind, and soul bone dry.

It wasn't so much that my self-esteem came back one day. In fact, quite the opposite was true. After many months of self-suppression and pretending, I was so mentally beaten down I had no clue how to go on. My misery threshold finally exploded and I confessed to my husband what a passive-aggressive tantrum I'd enmeshed myself in based off his long-ago comment. With the communication clearing between us, I began to feel supported and loved again. It was then, and only then, that I realized I was the one who dropped the ball of loving and supporting myself. No one else. Me. Or none of the aforementioned would have been allowed to happen.

Thanks for joining,
Leah