Happy Chronic Fatigue Awareness Day!

Woohoo!  CFS Awareness Day is finally here! It’s kind of a big deal for me.

Each year I try to do something official for it, sometimes it’s a small project because I’m too sick to do much.  Sometimes it’s bigger.  I might make myself a snarky tshirt, or an awareness key chain.  Last year I designed buttons and sent them out to family and friends to wear (which was awesome- everyone really did it!).  This year I’ve been focusing less on awareness and more on what CFS is actually like, and I guess this year’s project kind of goes along those lines.

I’ve talked before about the emotional pain that comes from being sick for years on end.  I took a portrait drawing class this past semester at a local college and for our final we had to take one word and describe it through art.  I thought it would be fun to combine the project with my CFS project, so I chose pain.  Not just plain old pain, but that deep constant pain that comes from a trial that doesn’t end.  Specifically, I wanted to catch that moment where you’ve lost all the strength you have left and absolutely need to be done.  For those of you who live through long term trials, you know this moment well.  You understand the darkness it brings and the despair that comes when, despite the fact that there is no possible way you can go on, you just have get up and keep going anyway.

I wanted to focus on the beauty that comes from that darkness.  How, even though I hardly ever meet anyone who is going through the exact thing I am, I have found many who understand pain.  Their understanding is what has helped me keep going when I nothing left, and because of my experience with pain I’ve been able to do the same for them.  It’s like we both have 0% left to give, and yet together our zero percents add up to enough.

So here is my drawing.  It represents 3 different women who have all hit the point where they have nothing left to give, but who know they still have to go on.  I specifically drew them from 3 different ethnicities- their situations are completely different, it is only pain that unifies them.   And even though none of them have anything left to give, together they have enough.