Accomplishing with Fibromyalgia, Chronic Illness & Depression

Living with fibromyalgia, chronic illness or depression can make it very challenging to achieve goals.

Simple everyday tasks become energy drainers, so when it comes to achieving bigger things there’s no doubt they’re gonna be far from easy.

About a month ago, a girl in one of the online forums I ‘visit’ was talking about how she’s fed up suffering, and wants to be normal.

She said that she wants to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and not exhausted…there’s so much stuff she wants to do but can’t.

My heart ached when I read her words. They could have come from my mouth. I feel the same way, and I know many other fibromites do too.

The challenge

I already suffer from depression and I tend to get even more depressed by my debilitating exhaustion, pain and fibro fog which makes it difficult to think clearly or concentrate on anything.

At my age, there’s so so much I want to do in my life but I see that some of these things may never happen. I managed to struggle through university twice.

It wasn’t easy.

I almost dropped out, and I missed alot of classes. I fell asleep in many classes when my body started shutting down and I couldn’t stop it. (My body’s shut down in some really inconvenient circumstances, which will make you fall off your chair when I tell you in future!). Work? that’s another story!

I still have these arguments with myself all the time, you know, the ‘why can’t I be normal?’ ones, and ‘there’s so much I want to do’ ones.

I still struggle to come to terms with fm but I now accept that it isn’t going away.

Try & persevere

Once you can do that, then you feel sad whenever you need to; and then you realise that anything that you really want to achieve in this life, will call for a very, very exceptional effort on your part.

We have to contend with the challenges that healthy people face, plus those challenges that fibromyalgia hands us.

It’s easy to get sucked in by the hopelessness but when we live with fibromyalgia and chronic illness we have to find ways of at least trying to fulfil our dreams.

Dreams are just too important to let go.

Our challenges might be mountainous, but they’re not insurmountable. Look I graduated twice from university when I wasn’t even sure I could make it through with my illness.

Yes I hear you say all of us sufferers are different in terms of how far we can push ourselves etcetera.

But nothing is impossible. Keep fighting every day. When we do accomplish our goals, they’ll only be so much sweeter for us.

I’m not sure what my future holds as regards big goals I want to accomplish, but I’m going to try. So should you.

Gentle hugs 🙂