Functioning Tired is a blog that was born from denying the notion that chronic illness is reserved for later in life.
The truth is that being diagnosed with chronic illness in your twenties (or even earlier!) is not uncommon. We’re here, silently suffering and having our struggles dismissed because our bodies are too young to have given up on us like this.
I could easily google what the most common treatment options for xyz illness are or what the first line of medications to try would be. I could read and join plenty of forums of people discussing what worked and what didn’t. There were endless answers to questions I wasn’t asking.
But who was able to tell me what I really wanted to know?
How was I going to work in an office? Did I just waste 4 years of my life dragging myself through college for a degree that I wouldn’t even be able to use? Did I ever have a shot at finding someone who would want to marry me? How the hell could I ever expect to take care of kids when some days I couldn’t even stand up off of the couch?
Was this a life sentence at 23?
I can’t promise you I have all the answers to these questions. Who does? But I can at least promise you that here, you won’t be struggling to figure out these answers alone.
My name is Caroline and I currently reside in Charlotte, North Carolina with my french bulldog, Moose. I have late stage neurological lyme disease, alongside other tick borne illnesses, and spent 15 years undiagnosed.
Being diagnosed with a chronic illness at 23 is definitely not the life I imagined for myself. It’s hard to describe the myriad of feelings that co-exist when finding out that your life is going to inherently revolve around trying not to feel like shit all the time.
This struggle is especially hard for those of us in our twenties, who are expected to be the healthiest that our society has to offer.
It’s hard to help people understand how you haven’t had the energy to lift your arms to wash your hair in a week. It’s even harder to help them understand how you might feel like you’re dying inside when on the surface you look perfectly fine.
So here’s to learning together how to make the best of life while Functioning Tired.
Cheers,
