Anger Made Me Stronger

Anger made me stronger.

Fighting made me stronger.

Empathy made me stronger.

I have always been someone who cared more about others than myself. Someone messed with me, f*ck them but whatever. But mess with someone I care about? You picked the wrong girl.

The thing is as an autistic I have hyper empathy. I relate to people in general in a way that most people relate only to close friends or family. This has pros and cons. But it makes me an activist by default. Because it makes it almost impossible for me to avoid empathizing with those in need.

And our community, the MECFS community we have so much need. From the bedbound severe patients who can't even find the dignity of a sponge bath to the workers cut from disability benefits for their life-altering illness not being severe enough to the patients trapped in psychiatric care and GET and CBT being tortured and gaslit because we dare not acknowledge the millions missing with this horrible neuroimmunological disease that kills your soul and leaves your empty husk to suffer and rot, forgotten by a society who can only see the value in the product, not people.

For me, the greatest pain of this disease is seeing that. Day after day. Knowing how exhausted and beyond the realm of imaginable pain so many are living and fighting just to be ignored. Being stuck here in my own bed, unable to do anything but shout into the internet void and hope an echo makes it out of this tiny bubble of spoonies.

Am I "strong" for doing this? I don't think so. I think I am fed up and angry. I think it takes far more strength to find acceptance and understanding, the keys to unlocking others' empathy. That is what I struggle to do. That is the strength I have to try day after day to find. But fighting, that is easy. Able-bodied people made that bit easy as pie.