Month: May 2024

I’m a little worried about my friend. She is so sweet and kind and generous, and she is also not doing well. She is feeling exhausted and drained and misunderstood by the people around her. And she is having difficulties reaching out to others to ask for help. If only just to listen to her and say nothing. I know she’s calling a friend like that just now, though, and I hope she’s getting the support she needs. I just hope she knows that I’m there too, and that I understand very well what it’s like to be extremely tired and frustrated with one’s body and in pain.

Anyway, I’m pretty well today. I slept properly for the second night in a row, which is extremely helpful.

[… the rest was written in Dutch]

I feel fat. I just tried to put on some really nice shorts, but they were too small. They still fit me last year, but I have since gained weight. I don’t even know how much weight, because I daren’t step on the scale.

I hate how this illness is affecting my body. And I hate how I feel angry and frustrated and repulsed by how my body is failing me.

I’ve always been athletic (not that this kept me from feeling fat, but I did kind of *know* that I was slender), but now I look down at my tummy and I see a big round ball, instead of a flat part with a slight bulge at the bottom, just above my hips. I *know* I’m still not as fat as I feel – I’m not obese – but I am overweight and I have gone up two clothes sizes since I got sick. I hate that. And I hate feeling this way about myself. I want to love myself for who I am, regardless of what I look like. I do not judge others for being fat. I just hold myself to different standards.

And this is one thing I am still trying to learn. I deserve kindness from myself. I deserve to love my body. But it is really, really hard to love a body that is sick and refuses to let me do one of the things I have always loved to do: exercise. I hope I learn in time. I fear I may not, or not fully. Time will tell.