HiddenLilly

The rain falls outside my window as I once again find myself in my bed fighting an invisible foe, locked in a never-ending battle where I'm at a disadvantage of having no solid knowledge about my opponent other than speculations. My opponents armoury could be stocked with depression, anxiety, ADHD/ADD, IBS, lactose-intolerance, coeliac and maybe even ME. I do not fight, I struggle. Met only with 'you're probably imagining it', 'you'll get over it', 'you're just lazy' or 'you're probably just a hypochondriac', I struggle feeling very much alone in a fight against an invisible enemy. I fear my burden on others will drive them away from me and so all this I keep inside me for my own protection, and it's tearing me apart. For those who do not know, which I presume is many of you, I have struggled with food ever since I had a run in with gastroenteritis in Hong Kong 2 years ago. For the past year I have had to go on a heavily reduced gluten and lactose diet in order to improve my health situation. Although this helps me I have yet to confirm whether I actually have coeliac or lactose-intolerance as my blood test results came up negative, which leads to the only other solution; gastroscopy. For those who do not know what that means, it basically means they insert a tube down my throat to access the intestines. This very concept would trigger my anxiety and has been out of the question for many months, but my condition is not improving and I'm at point where I want it done in hopes of finding answers. Unfortunately this also means that I have to cut out all the gluten- and lactose-free products in my diet in order for the results to be true. And I have to do that for 3 weeks before the procedure. It's been not more then half a week and I feel terrible. I feel sick after eating which makes me almost not want to eat at all. Don't worry, I still eat although I'd rather not. I'm just scared. Scared that even going through with that procedure the results will still not yield anything and I'll still be stuck with an invisible illness.

23 years old, with no job, still living at home and with mental issues that stop me in my tracks to even begin to think of having a job, combine that with the low energy and you have me. My only escape; to keep smiling. After returning home from finishing University in the UK I have slowly noticed how lonely I truly am. All the friends I made during my time in the UK are far away, with jobs and a path in life, yet here I am. I have no path, no ambition, no place. Even my part-time job as an assistant teacher has slowly hammered that nail in my coffin of loneliness. Seeing others in their groups, laughing, joking. I see I do not have that. I even feel alienated from my co-workers. I miss those people that I can truly be myself around. I have had to retreat behind a mask in order to fit in at work. I know it surely is not my future career; being a teacher, as that is not the person I am. I am silly, whimsical and enjoy saying things as they are. I am not ashamed of many things and discuss things in the open without a care in the world, but I cannot do this anymore. I am chained, captured like a bird in a cage. Do not get me wrong, I have people I can do these things with but they are online, on a computer screen. I cannot hold them, nor feel their presence in the room. I am still alone.

It may well be the weather bringing upon this depression, or more so amplifying it, but the matter still stands; it has been almost a year since I arrived back home in my quaint little town in Norway and I have gone nowhere with my life. I am stuck. I have no motivation to do the one thing I ever enjoyed doing, and to add the health issues to this already messed up recipe for disaster and you have someone who can hardly find the strength to get out of bed in the morning. What am I doing here? Why am I here? The questions racing in my head as I lie there with the nausea from consuming the sustenance to keep me alive.

I never really blog, evidently from the last blogpost, and I do not understand the mysterious reasonings for my sudden urge to do so but whatever it may be, getting it off my chest is sometimes in order to help me keep the mask from cracking. And believe me when I say that I don't always feel this bad, it comes and goes like the weather but I came to a breaking point and had to find some way of letting out some steam. I apologise if It's not well written, I'm not in much of a mood to go through and make it coherent as I wrote it as it was in my head. I thank you though, for taking the time to read it. It is but some ramblings of a girl with an invisible enemy.