words for wednesday {page 12, nice people}

My friend finds the best words and gives them to me as presents. She found the ones you read today.

“Fame is a vapour

Popularity an accident

Riches take wings

Only one thing endures, and that is Character.”

Horace Greeley

And then, I think what my friend wrote after this is even better. “It doesn’t matter if you spend 8 hours a day at a job you hate or all day in your home. It matters who you were in that 8 hours."

I just have me left - I don't have the qualifications or income or social life I had envisaged. Sometimes I feel scared even to talk to my hairdresser in case she asks what I've been doing that day. I fear someone will come to the door while I am asleep at midday. I feel that I need to justify my very existence by proof of things achieved. It's the darkest cage, the thought that I am a waste if I don't do the usual things, have the conventional life. But when I think that it's how I live my moments, I feel like I am alive; that my days matter, that my existence is valid.

  

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."

Mother Theresa

Disillusionment with medics had settled thick inside me, and last week I had to attend another appointment with a nurse to be put on a ‘care plan’. I wasn’t looking forward to it – I could predict the unhelpful comments and anticipate the deep sense of misunderstanding I so often stumble away with. 

‘You only weigh such and such, are you sure you don’t have anorexia rather than CFS?’

 ‘You don’t eat sugar, dairy or wheat; I’m concerned it’s not a balanced enough diet.’

‘Your tests are all spot on perfect, so things are obviously going well.’

But this nurse, she had me bouncing out of the clinic, ecstatic. I actually had an adrenalin rush from happiness, and managed to go to a few shops afterwards before it wore off. Not only did she empathise about my illness, she spoke with sadness about all the misunderstanding that invisible and longterm illness sufferers get. Centrelink, dreams lost, and patience were just some of the things we talked about. She knew I was petite, she knew my diet was healthy, she knew I was sick. We laughed and talked for almost an hour and every word she said was balm to me. It was like having a warm bubble bath after many ice ones.

I went away and thought that if every single person was as kind as she was, we would have a very happy world. I naively wonder why more people can’t be like that? She is doing one of the greatest jobs on earth.