It’s all in the mind apparently. Stress, feeling ill, being upset and tired and angry and uncontrollably sad. All in the mind.
If that’s the case, does someone want to swap?

A lot has happened this year. New job, new friends, new house. New lifestyle.
Losing friends, losing a boyfriend. Losing sleep. Losing a lifestyle.
I think I could perhaps have more of a grip on it all it it didn’t seem to happen ALL at the same time. Well six months has already gone by so, for me, it does seemed to have taken place in quick succession.

What massively affected me was the deterioration of my health in a very short space of time. For years I have battled with stomach problems, nausea (and consequently a constant paranoia I was pregnant), severe back pain, unexplainable fevers, fainting episodes… it just didn’t make any sense at all.
And then I lived at the doctor for 10 months solid. A&Es all over the country. And after 10 months of tests and tears and passing out on my colleagues came the diagnosis: M.E.
It all makes sense now. I just wish it didn’t have to be me.

For one I can tell you M.E and Event life do not marry well. 18 hour days on site, sleeping in shared metal bunker bins, with 6am shower queues, cremated pasta, 13 metre queues of serving customers. I know… I am really selling it.

Two weeks ago I took myself off to my car and fell asleep for 33 minutes. I didn’t hear my phone ring 11 times and it was on extra loud and vibrate in my hand.

This weird addiction I have for work is something I will never be able to explain. When you are so over-tired but all you want to do is keep going. When you are SO over-tired you can’t sleep and that one extra drink or cigarette at 3am is always (at the time) a good idea. The best in fact. (A certain someone I know swears religiously by morning alka seltzers).

And then you get the chance to relax. To sleep. To have a day off. But they are a myth. They really don’t exist. There is always another email, another event, another message, another phone call, another delivery. Another angry person.
I can no longer sit still. My body has to crumble for to me to do so. It seems a common motto at work that “no job is worth your health”. Well it then seems that my superhero team are all made of bulletproof skin.

The hardest part, more recently, was finding out I cannot have children. I found out at work just after a three-hour meeting. If you had asked my life plan six years ago, I would have had three children by now. But I have zero and the chances of being able to have any of my own, through the frozen methods taken, are less than 20%. I just wanted an army of boys.

But then 20%, in the grand scheme of things, is a nice round number.

And this brings me back to mindset. Change the way you think. So after six months of this year I have. And I am sorry, but I really proud of myself for doing so. Proud of my almost-bulletproof skin.