Guilt

I wonder if anyone else feels guilty when they get sick. The past year while I was struggling with being ill and not knowing why (at the worst if feels like I have full blown flu, at the best a lingering cold but without the sneezing). I kept thinking "what am I doing wrong" "should I be eating better, exercising more? Less?" I work as a yoga teacher and have always been active. I ate fresh and organic, I didn't drink or eat junk food, so I kept thinking why. It didn't help much that people loved saying "god you are always ill" when I was at my worst and couldn't hide it. NOTE - saying that to anyone struggling with their health is the least fucking useful thing EVER. They know they are ill, they hate being ill and you can guarantee its not through choice. They also may well have something serious going on that shock horror they haven't told you.

I have not told anyone other than my direct family and two friends that I am waiting for a diagnosis for an auto immune disease. I don't want to talk about it, especially until I know which one it is, until I have a label. Even then I will want a chance to start figuring it out first.

Then as well as the "you are always ill" brigade there are the "oh you probably need to do ....." Then tell you some amazing homeopathic thing or something fucking obvious that you did 3 years ago like giving up fizzy pop. The underlying message being "you could choose to not be ill" "I did this and never caught a cold again" this is more well intentioned than the previous. But again have you considered that they may have something serious that they haven't told you or don't want to tell you. In fact this brigade is one of the reasons I don't talk about being sick to people I know. It's not polite to tell someone to fuck off to their face. I had a dear friend who had cancer and was told to her face that it was probably her fault for having too acid a diet, that she needs to eat an alkaline diet. That that had read on facebook that so wine ate alkaline and cured their cancer, oh and also on facebook was a miracle fruit that was "guaranteed" to cure cancer but the corrupt drug companies didn't want us to know. Sure because they wouldn't just turn it into a really expensive pill and make billions. She fought as hard as she could and later died leaving a young family behind her. I guess that was her fault.

That I think is why I feel guilty at being sick, because people can't cope with the idea that sometimes shit just happens. That good people clean living folk get ill and it's nothing they have done to deserve it. It scares the shit out of them.

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