Last year Roman was 5 months old. I did laundry; hung it out to dry, brought it in, folded it and put it away. I organised the corners of our living room (and wanted to die doing it), I organised the drawers of Roman's clothes every 3 months, I vacumed, dusted and polished his room. I aired out his curtains (back in the days when he had curtains!) and would throw open the window as wide as it would go. I unclogged the kitchen sink, poured bleach down the drain in another fruitless attempt to keep it clean, scrubbed and bleached the sink knowing that within a week it would be back to it's disgusting state. I would mop floors, scrub counter tops and even got down on all fours to clean the bathroom floor corners that the mop found hard to reach. The toilet was clean, the bath never had dirty foot prints on it.
Just as I would throw open the windows in Roman's room I would do the same in our room and in the living room. I would carry this work out over a period of a week; scattering the jobs out knowing full well I was the only one responsible for doing them.
And suddenly, everything changed.
I got very sick with mastitis. Loads of washing felt like blocks of concrete in my arms. Scrubbing the toilet free from urine seemed less important to me. I had better things for my energy to do like eat and get better. I recovered from the mastitis but as I have ME it stripped me of my energy. There is even a pile of clean laundry, sitting in a basket in B's bedroom (I say B's bedroom because it's not really my room. My room is the living room and the couch is my bed) that has been there since last summer. A year ago.
I remember that life was very different until I got struck down with an infection. And that's how easily life can throw punches at me. One infection, one virus, one stomach bug and I am knocked out for a year. Everything annoys me now, too. Like you wouldn't believe. I get annoyed when B hangs washing inside and puts the heating on in the summer. The kitchen is constantly dirty. Every room is a mess. There are two over full washing baskets full of months old dirty clothes. The bathroom hasn't been cleaned in a month. I sleep on a couch. I live my life on a couch. I sleep a maximum of four hours a night. I hardly see anyone I know and I don't know who my friends are any more - or if I can call people I haven't seen in years friends.
And there are certain people who swing by every month without a moment's notice. I don't get dressed because it's an effort. Life is an effort so don't expect me to come to the party without my pyjama's, after all that's the uniform of the sick, isn't it?
