A friend (I use the term loosely. More of a former acquaintance, really.), just sent me a message on FB. It was so long I had to copy-paste it into word and it took up 12 pages.
She got COVID-19 at the very start of the outbreak in the UK, and she’s been ill for months in the aftermath. Yesterday, her doctor asked her if she’s ever heard of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or as it’s more commonly known, “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.” (Or “yuppie flu” to the vitriolic who also suffer from an unfortunate case of “head-in-ass” syndrome.)
They told her they’re seeing a lot of patients get sick with ME/CFS symptoms in the wake of COVID-19. They talked a lot to her about post-viral syndrome and how it might still go away, or how it might be permanent. They told her they just plain don’t have the answers. They gave her leaflets for cognitive behavioral therapy, for an illness that is increasingly being discovered has many, many physical causes (cranial instability and viral overload are just two examples) but has predominantly been treated with talky-therapy and general sweet fuck all else for years.
So she messaged me, the person she used to roll her eyes at when I said I was too sick to get out of bed some days. She apologized, at length, for all the times she said I was lazy, for all the times she rolled her eyes, and all the times she talked about me behind my back. She wrote, saying she’d heard from other friends that I’d gotten better recently, and she hopes I’m still doing better. And then she said, “I suppose this is what I get for being unkind,” and I had to take a moment to just breathe because however awful a friend she might have been to me in the past, chronic illnesses are not a curse.
They are not karma for bad things. They are not some sort of divine justice for not saying your prayers at night or not being a good person. There is no morality involved in health. There’s genetics, chance, environmental risk, and sometimes, just outright bad luck. It is not a judgment from on high. You/I/We did not do something wrong either in this life or in a past one to “deserve” anything like this.
Sickness happens. That is an unfortunate truth of being alive.
And the sooner we stop equating health with morality and strength of character, the better. I’m not alive because I’m a strong-willed, good person, I’m alive because I managed to hang on long enough to get (one of) my illness treated. That’s it. That’s the truth. Strength of moral character means sweet fuck all when the medical world has decided you don’t matter. It just leaves for a pretty epitaph.