Loneliness vs. Being Alone

You don't feel like you're alone so much until people intervene and insist on your not being alone - and then offering no concession to - no interest in - nothing but a sort of mute indifference to the fact that you are in fact sick, and really struggling, the entire time. This makes me feel a thousand times more alone.

Mentioning this illness is the last thing I want to do, especially when there is food on a table, and I am being offered food. But when you are struggling to keep yourself from falling off your chair, and can't even register most of what is being said in a conversation because you are in so much pain that it is like a siren blasting between your ears, it's hard to maintain an air of casualness and impossible to be witty. It would be much easier if it would be OK to do things like this at least somewhat horizontally. Or at least in some way that the people you are with understand - or are not too persnickety to accept - that something is wrong, and you are not like them - not healthy - not at ease - (interesting word, "disease") because you feel like you are going to fall off your chair and crash into a million pieces.

When you can't make any adjustment - and the people you are with refuse to acknowlege that any of this is happening - ("you don't look tired" etc,) I find I am much less lonely when I am alone than in these situations.