Catch Up Mondays: Isolation – revisited

This post was first posted on May 26, 2012.  Isolation affects not only those of us with chemical sensitivity or other environmental illnesses.  It affects anyone who suffers from chronic illness.  We can’t go where others go, can’t eat what others do, don’t have the energy to do what everyone else is doing, and find it hard to explain this to those going about life like we used to be able to do.  I have written other posts on isolation here, here, and here.

“I pray to God for answers. I ask for His support and encouragement. If I have to live in this pain, in this bubble, in this life of isolation and loneliness the rest of my life, I don’t know what I will do.

Recently I was in contact with a friend who is also a mold survivor.  We talked about this blog and topics that should be covered other than excerpts from my book.  She asked if I was going to talk about Isolation.  I said that I had considered it as one of my topics.  In fact isolation seems to be a general topic and matter of woe among fellow mold sufferers and those suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).

I soon began to realize that once my life had changed and I was no longer able to attend indoor functions, be among large crowds, go shopping or out to lunch, I also wasn’t being called or visited.  A majority of my treatment took me far away from home to Dallas, TX.  The longer I was there, the less I heard from others.  It was hard going through all that I went through by myself.  I thought when I finally came home, I would be totally well and everything would be the same as it always was.  I soon began to realize what it must feel like for a soldier to return after many months away at battle.  In my book I write:

I also began realizing what soldiers must feel like after returning from an extended tour of duty. How do you assimilate back into your life? Things keep going on and moving forward but you aren’t there to participate in the moving forward. People carry on conversations but you feel like you were dropped in the middle of a story without access to the beginning. So you just sit there, and you listen but don’t speak.

Things were different when I returned home.  I was still sick and still not able to visit in the homes of friends or go out.  So much had happened after being gone for almost a year (2003) that I felt lost in conversations.  Someone would talk about something that had happened and I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about because I hadn’t been there, hadn’t been involved in life at home and hadn’t witnessed changes that took place.  In this depressed state I wrote:

Life Passes Her By

She sits and stares out the window and she doesn’t recognize anything

Life has passed her by and nothing is the same

Where was she when all this happened? She was here but

 Life passed her by

Buildings were built and buildings were torn down

    People arrived and left;

 People were born and people died

Life passed her by

People divorced and others married;

People found new jobs and new hobbies

Where was she—she was there

but she did not participate in life

It passed her by

She reaches out but touches nothing;

 Life is just past her grasp

She stretches and bends and tries again

But life passes her by

She talks to people but it is a jumble to understand what they say

The life she missed is just out of her reach

Life passed her by

I learned through a lot of therapy that there were things I could do to try to lift myself up from the loneliness and desperation.  In another post I will talk about things I and others have done.