From the review
@slysaint mentioned:
“It’s an illness that essentially removes your ability to have effort,” Brea says. I often feel like a ghost hovering through a car crash; I can hear the sounds and see the images, but I’m disconnected from that world by “fatigue”.
I love the ghost comparison and the word "disconnected" fits perfectly! I've never thought of the word "ghost" before, but that's exactly how I've felt the past 15 years. I lived in Berlin, this vibrant, exciting city and when I walked to the supermarket (the only possible effort for that day), I saw all the people sitting in cafes and bars etc while I just had to go back to bed as soon as possible and couldn't stop to enjoy the atmosphere. Had to watch the others live and they didn't even realized I was there as I was needing my energy to make it to the supermarket and couldn't look up or smile at someone or stop to small talk. And when I had to talk to someone it felt very "disconnected" because I was too exhausted, more like a roboter giving automatic, hopefully appropriate answers and not like me expressing my feelings/views or enjoying a good joke/chat/discussion.
Or when I tried to work for the last time (lasted 4 month until complete crash) I stood at the busy Berlin bus stops after work, holding back tears from pain and exhaustion, sometimes having to sit down on the sidewalk to take breaks to make it to the bus stop at all, while the people around me were planning their summer evenings. It felt very ghost-like and lonely (didn't even have a diagnosis for 14 years, so no community).
Life is there, within reach, you can see and hear and smell and remember and long for it but you just can't take part, like a ghost that is separated from the living.
Like this one, too, I certainly feel like a skeleton (on the inside, on the outside is some un-skeleton ME-extra-weight
):
ME creates a skeleton out of what you once were, and your ability to survive depends on your capacity to make peace with that skeleton. I mean survive in very literal terms– as the film points out, the leading cause of death for people living with ME is suicide.
Sorry, I shouldn't make this about me, this thread is about the reviews.
These parts just really resonated with me and I'm still processing the past 15 years after finally receiving a diagnosis.
