{"id":14,"date":"2005-01-19T19:33:53","date_gmt":"2005-01-19T19:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ladle\/wordpress\/?p=14"},"modified":"2005-01-19T19:33:53","modified_gmt":"2005-01-19T19:33:53","slug":"enough_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sent this mail out to about 40 people on Sunday: old friends, and family. Half of them knew most of it but golly gee: so that’s me and this weblog open and raw to the world then.
\nI guess it’s as good a way of introducing any new friends to what this is about as any, poorly-constructed as it is. I’d been aching over sending it since December, and decided I needed a weblog in case anyone who received it wanted to understand a bit more. So it all became a bit chicken-and-egg.
\nI guess time will tell if it was wise. I’ve been swaying from slightly-euphoric relief to screaming anxiety since, my biggest fear being that it’s an imposition of things to some people who don’t want to know it, and most of all, with respect to gender to the half of those who didn’t know, that they’d be forced to call me something they weren’t comfortable with in public, while raising eyebrows at each other in private. This could only make me more isolated, and it’d be my fault. But I’m so unhappy and lonely, this may be a nothing-to-lose thing, that I should have done 5\/10\/20 years ago.
\n\"letter2.jpg\"
\nI’m also very worried about precedence<\/em>: how when some read this mail they may reflect what I tell them with respect to others (some will understand this), or with respect to representations of transgendered issues on the web, most of which I dislike intensely. That’s another article I guess.
\nMessage edited wherever I feel like it, because it’s mine, to protect the innocent, including me. I’m not proud of the style, phrasing, or how hard\/embarrassing it must have been to receive by some. But some things you just have to do to survive I guess.
\nI’ve had some lovely kind short replies, a couple that have made my heart leap with happiness, and one or two that have amazed me with their insight. Because their reactions made me brave, I’m going to include the letter here and now. No-one’s been nasty, so my little Thai friend, who offered to kick-box anyone who was, will have to keep her boots clean for now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear all,
\nThis is a hard email to write and I’ve been writing it in my head
\nfor several weeks. It’s really a “me” letter – something to try and
\nhelp myself – and I’m sure I’ll feel excruciatingly embarrassed the
\nminute I send it. It’s long too – sorry.
\nI’m quite ill, and altogether not in a very good way, and one of
\nthe reasons I think I want to send this (although I’m not sure of
\nmost of the reasons) is just to clear the air for myself. Someone
\nbeing ill can be very awkward for the non-ill, not knowing what to
\nsay, worrying about saying something inappropriate, etc. and I don’t
\nwant that to get in the way anymore.
\nSo here’s the thing: my ME\/CFS has worsened considerably in the
\nlast few years, as some of you will know, and really dived in the
\nlast 6 months. I’m currently stuck in the house, mostly in bed.
\nWhich makes me terribly afraid about my future, and L’s future,
\nas a consequence of my inability to cope.
\nThe worst thing of all is that I’ve developed a large chunk of bad
\ndaily anxiety disorder, and seemingly untreatable depression over the
\nlast 5 years – none of this was a feature of my first 5 or so years of
\nME\/CFS – and it’s crippling. These are largely still taboos, which
\nI’ve toned down in talking to most of you over the past few years,
\nbut they’re big and threatening now – I’ve felt suicidal recently,
\nto be frank. Which I don’t have any real excuse for, as people have
\nit a lot worse than me, but it flares up. None of this is helped by
\nthe feelings of isolation set up by not being able to see friends,
\nthrough physical inability, social anxiety, worry of what you’ll
\nthink of me, worry about just generally being a pain to have an
\nill person around that you may feel you have to talk illness with.
\nAnd it’s all compounded hugely by my being transgendered, as some of
\nyou will know and have discussed with me til the cows come home for
\nyears, some of you will have guessed years ago and been very quietly
\nsweet about, and some of you will be blinking at right now, I guess.
\nIt’s just been a very big sorrow to me since childhood, and a cause
\nof lots of shame and worry. L deciding to call me Honey years ago
\nwasn’t a coincidence, and the fact I repeatedly foisted it on you all
\nwithout explaining it to at least a significant proportion of you is
\nsomething that makes me feel quite ashamed. The happier coincidence
\nthat I’m bi and L’s always felt more gay than straight means
\nthank goodness we both have someone to love dearly. But L and
\nothers have had a lot of trouble translating mental female pronouns
\nwhen referring to me into male ones in the company of others, I can
\ntell you. Hopefully they can stop all that now. I’m really sorry –
\nwith some of you I just couldn’t find a way to tell you properly,
\nor it just felt like an intrusion you probably didn’t want to hear
\nabout, so I played with it like a game, when really it’s a fairly
\nconstant big sad ache. If some of you who didn’t know can make the
\nimaginative leap to see me and treat me as I really am, that would help
\nme enormously. I understand it’s not easy for some to accept, or do.
\nProbably the most welcome response from the half of you who I haven’t
\ntalked to about it would be “duh, now tell us something we DON’T know”.
\nI suppose I wanted to say I really do feel very lonely at the moment,
\nand L too, and I’m aware that 90% of it has been me blocking out
\neveryone because of this vile anxiety, depression and body-numbing
\nillness. I feel bad about giving into this. I can’t keep doing
\nthis and staying alive, and this mail I suppose is an attempt to
\ngrab a straw. I can’t do without friends, but sadly I don’t have
\nanything to offer back right now, so it’s been catch-22. I just
\ndidn’t want you to think I’d tailed off communication through apathy,
\nor that something else was going on that grabbed me more. Nothing but
\nfear and trying to come to terms with living in some solitude with a
\ncertain amount of disability for the rest of my life is grabbing me
\nright now. I can do a good impersonation of fun-ability for a time,
\nbut vicious mood swings are a feature of this illness, and I suspect
\nit’ll be a long time til I get round this mountain, if I do.
\nI guess I wanted to clear the air in terms of future expectations
\ntoo. A few months ago, the hearing in my left ear disappeared into
\nmush, coincident with me contracting a nasty gastric thing, and I
\nwas assured repeatedly by my GPs that it was a middle ear
\ninfection and would go… I probably set off their hypochondriac
\nalerts. The current 80 week (yep, 1 1\/2 years) waiting list locally
\nto see an Ear\/Nose\/Throat department eventually made me
\nblow a gasket so I swallowed my dubious Old Labour pride and paid
\nfor a private consultation, and was swiftly told that the loss was
\n“severe and permanent” and in my inner ear, and was ushered off
\nfor yet another set of blood tests and an MRI scan, which I’ve just
\nhad, to eliminate anything really nasty. This ENT surgeon
\ndid a lot of shrugging, and said if nothing really nasty proved to
\nturn up it’d just be “one of those things”. The result is that
\nI’m terrified I’ll have another “one of those things” on the right
\nside, and be plunged into deafness, with fat chance of keeping any
\nfriends but some annoying mime artist called Tabitha. I get a lot
\nof nasty echoes now in anything but very subdued conditions, tinnitus
\n(pretty constant loud ringing) in my left ear, and I’m having trouble
\nlistening to the TV or music except via headphones which help a bit.
\nI suspect concerts\/cinemas\/busy pubs might not be on anymore, even if
\nI get rid of some of this ME\/CFS stuff and can go out at some point.
\nIt’s just all very scary to see your life seemingly disappear like
\nthis: I think I’m trying to say if I do get a chance to see some of
\nyou again, I don’t want to be a PAIN, so please don’t misinterpret
\nme running away or hiding under tables as anything but a me-thing.
\nMusic and friends have been my whole life, and if I go deaf(ish?),
\nI’m not sure what will keep me going: I suppose the best I can say
\nis that at least I’ll have a lot of music I’d like to give away if
\nanyone wants it.
\nOh goodness, some of you are probably wondering why I mailed you.
\nSome of us probably haven’t spoken in person in years. Just please
\ntake it that either you’re a dear friend, who’s put up with endless
\ntears and screams over the years, or that you’re just someone I
\nintuitively felt a need to mail – because you’ve been a friend, and
\nI just had to mail because I get a mental nudge that you have that
\nsensitivity to understand some of this and my stupid need to send
\nthis mail. There’s probably a dozen other people I’ll be horrified I
\nmissed off, but some of you have partners who know me, or friends, or
\npeople whose email addresses I couldn’t find before chickening out from
\nsending this, who you could tell if you wanted. I used to tell people
\nwho were kind enough to listen to me to keep things to themselves –
\nshame, and the british need not to embarrass others with personal woes
\n– but please don’t do that anymore. Desperate times need desperate
\nmeasures, so please if it’s relevant or you feel it’s getting in the
\nway of talking to someone else, just splurge. If anyone who got the
\ntail end of this felt the need to decry those with ME\/CFS as fakers or
\ncases for the shrink, or indeed similarly for those not born with the
\nsame brain\/body gender, then sod them. I used to care but I’m past
\nall that now. It might actually make it easier for me to take some
\nabuse for actually being me, rather than doing it from the inside.
\nSo don’t worry about it. Mail Prince Charles if you want.
\nIn that spirit, I’ve made a terribly serious weblog too, 25 years
\nafter everyone else stopped posting to theirs, maybe just so I know
\nI’m open and staying open now. It’d be nice if some of you who felt
\nlike it popped in.
\nhttp:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog<\/a>
\nI hope this is the first and last mail of this type I’ll ever send
\nagain and you’ll ever have the embarrassment to read: I feel like
\nsome massive egoist, and I’ve never done anything like this before.
\nI just am feeling very bad, very black, and very scared a lot of
\nthe time, and it would be nice if anyone had been through anything
\nsimilar and as bleak and prolonged, or knew someone who had, or knew
\na kind thoughtful ENT surgeon, or knew anyone who might know anyone
\nwith any expertise on ME\/CFS or immunology, or just knew something
\ncheery could drop me a line. I’m rotten(\/phobic) with replying to
\nemails just now, so I can’t offer too much back – really on anything
\nright now – but it’d be nice to hear some kind of echo back from this;
\nor maybe comments on the weblog or something. Oh and I’ll turn on
\nMSN too seeing lots of you are.
\nOh, mess of a mail. I think all I’m really saying is please don’t
\ntreat me with kid gloves. You’ve all been so kind over the last
\n10 weird years of my life, and it’d be a relief, I think, if you felt you
\nwanted to, to just ask the most inappropriate questions to me about
\nanything I said that you wanted to ask about. Walking around me
\nin carpet slippers just now might make me feel I’m on a hospital
\nward somewhere near the exit, and that’s the worst thing right now.
\nI’m not sure what I’m asking for really, having got to the end of
\nall this. I think it’s just so you all know, and I know you know,
\nand I can have a bit of an anxiety rest and maybe join back in a
\nlittle.
\nHoney x\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sent this mail out to about 40 people on Sunday: old friends, and family. Half of them knew most of it but golly gee: so that’s me and this weblog open and raw to the world then. I guess it’s as good a way of introducing any new friends to what this is about … Continue reading Enough<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumblings.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}