16 Surprising Reasons Why I Don’t Read The Mighty!
Numbered lists, meh.
With a name like The Mighty, I was expecting to be inspired. My beautiful chronically ill Facebook friends are mighty. They rip my heart out with their suffering and inspire me with how hard they try. Every. Single. Day.
Battling and suffering are two different activities. I strongly oppose efforts to re-define suffering as battling.
Nurturing a bad attitude won’t improve my quality of life, it will just make me more annoying.
Life chronically ill is humiliating. Fighting for my health restores dignity, not complaining.
Quackery gets promoted on The Mighty.
Sympathy will not treat my untreatable disease. Nor will self-pity. I must focus on solutions.
Ehlers-Danlos has shaped my entire life since conception. I have it vs. it has me is a meaningless debate.
Ehlers-Danlos is invisible, complicated and bizarre. Of course people won’t understand it. Doctors don’t even understand it.
I may seem difficult or even crazy because of my bizarre, invisible disease. I am fine with that.
When I need something because I don’t feel well, I will ask for it, not pine for it on The Mighty.
No bystander has ever made a nasty comment about my handicap parking placard. God help anyone who ever does.
Physicians have the highest rate of suicide among professionals. Not an easy job. The problems in healthcare are extremely complex. Many diseases lack good treatment. It would be mighty to understand that.
Growing up, I was ridiculed for my severely disabling EDS symptoms by my parents, who were also violent, attention-seeking drama queens (imagine two Oppositional Defiant four-year-olds with car keys and credit cards). I am grateful to have only Ehlers-Danlos ruining my life now. Every. Single. Day.
For most of my life, the only thing that mattered was trying to get my sick, weak, fragile body across the room. I did not have the energy to care what other people thought of me. I used it all trying get across a room.
Now that I can do more than just drag my body across a room, I have come to realize
all that matters is looking good and having fun.
Palm Springs, California, December 2016.
Me, ashen, coming down with laryngitis and a wicked head cold.
I didn’t smoke the cigar.