Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E.

Since uni finished this year I went quite down hill...
I saw the signs coming along in the last module and then I collapsed.

 My friend from home doing Fine Art at Uni of created this as an illustration of the situation. She finds that when she is in a bad way it helps to channel her emotions into a drawing. This kind of inspired me when I was in the pit of sadness.
M.E is one of the silent illnesses that other people can't really see and therefore people can't really empathise with what you are going through and it takes a while choosing who you are going to tell about it.

 I feel that this plays on the metaphor that M.E. in the short term comes in waves. You can feel your legs getting heavy and everything becoming achey, your eyes feeling like they are falling out of you head until you grind to a holt and a big wave engulfs you for a few hours.

 This is portraying how it feels that your arms and legs feel like they are being pulled down by weights and that it is impossible to get up or move because you are being dragged down. It also feels like my eyes are trying to be gauged out .

This is more an image of feeling helpless on the floor with hands trying to drag you down and steal my eyes whilst a big grey ghostly monster is sucking all of the strength and energy out of me.

I feel that these illustrations communicate how I felt when I created them. This is probably the best thing I have drawn from imagination before especially when body language is considered.

I have found that these are quite powerful images and I have shown them to people who are close to me to try and explain how I feel because it is a silent illness. I also have shown a few of my friends who have M.E too and they said they captured how they felt too. My friend and I are thinking about making an anonymous collaborative zine of how we feel with M.E and maybe leaving it at places like the doctors to raise awareness and understanding.

I have been doing more and more drawings of the style about when I am feeling down or hurt and I am finding them really cathartic and a good way of expelling my emotions from my being but not being ignorant to them. They are also a way of showing how I feel when I am affected by someones actions but cannot verbalise/articulate it.