I’m what you might call a life-loving person. Happily married with a beautiful son, a job I adore – life couldn’t be more perfect. I wake up with a smile on my face every morning. Well, I use to. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my life.
But my world has been turned upside down. I suffer from a disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Every day I wake up and I feel like I haven’t been asleep at all. So I stay in bed. In bed, the hours and minutes get shorter. The longer I stay asleep, the more exhausted I get.
I have to physically force myself to get up. Up and out of my dark room. During the day I get so tired that I have to take naps. I get sever headaches and memory loss.
It changes me as a person. I first began to suffer from CFS during my first year at college although I didn’t realise it. It was the worst year of my life. I was a complete mess.
I was constantly tired, sleeping on average 12 hours a day. Sometimes I was bed-bound for full days. I didn’t understand what was happening. My studies were suffering as a result. I was missing lectures, classes and everything all the other students were doing. I hadn’t any friends.
No one talked to me. ‘She’s so lazy’ they would all say. I felt so alone and I wasn’t coping. This wasn’t how college life was supposed to be.
I was meant to be out with fiends, meeting new people, having a whale of a time. Instead, I was becoming depressed. I decided to go and see a doctor at my Easter break. Going to the surgery that day, I thought I was suffering from depression. I came out realising that I was suffering from CFS. When I got home, I cried.
The Essay on Helen Joy Life Jack Suffering
Shadowlands is a love story based on the life of the author, writer, and lecturer Clive Lewis, known as Jack. Jack was an intellectual man who had a tough heart to protect him from what he feared the most, suffering. Jack struggled with the reasons for life sufferings; however, it was Helen Joy Greshem that brought an optimistic eye-opening experience into Jack's life that would help him ...
I was in total state of shock. But somehow through all the grief, I was relieved. I was relieved that I finally understood. All my questions had been answered. Now I could do something about it.
Little did I know my life would never be the same again. My life became a timetable. I got up at the same time every morning and I went to bed at the same time every night no matter what. I had to sacrifice my social life for my studies.
Slowly but surely I became friendly with the others. I became especially friendly with Peter. He was on the same equestrian course as me. You might say it was love at first sight. Within 3 years he proposed and we were married.
Peter has been my rock in life. My shoulder to cry on. My safety net. My support. He has always been there to lift my spirits and carry me safely through rough storms. After getting our degrees, peter and I set up a horse-riding school together.
‘The Stony Stable’ we call it. We ” re both passionate about horses and we love working with them for a living. But again, with CFS complications are involved. I can’t go out on the horses too often. It gets me down having to watch the classes learn how to mount their saddles and how to trot from inside the house.
Not being able to do one of the things I love the most kills me inside. Why me? A question I have asked myself hundreds of times. But I have some to realise that there is no answer. May 2002, our little angel was born. Jack, we decided to call him, after my granddad. He was beautiful.
So tiny, so innocent. He was a little ray of sunshine in my life. Jack’s birth made me realise that in some ways I am very unfortunate but in many ways I am blessed and I am grateful for that.
