Hello lovelies 
A bit of an unusual post for today. If you pop by regularly here you know I usually write about what makes me happy, like cakes, frilly pants, or my latest doodles . Anything I have found pretty or yummy tasting usually ends up here really.
But just lately it’s been hard to concentrate on any of those pastimes and loves because something strange has been happening. And because this is an honest place, and also because you are all honestly my friends, I wanted to share it with you. But I promise all normal silliness will resume after this post, just wanted to let you know what’s been going on in the world of ickle. Sometimes things do take a more serious turn don’t they? , but I guess that’s how you appreciate the jolly bits *wink ! …
When I was a little girl I had lots of dolls, most of them were plastic with big yellow hair and “boobies” and I never really warmed to them, but one day my mum bought me a set of little china dolls. They had tiny White painted faces with rose petal cheeks, big eyes and finely painted fluttery eyelashes. Their bodies were made of soft cloth but their arms and legs were bone white porcelain, I can’t tell you how much I loved them, I adored them.
I put them to bed with me each night and played with them constantly. Then one day I dropped one, my favourite one. I heard her crack , I picked her up and her tiny leg was shattered. There was a wire running through her leg from knee to foot and it was holding the biggest china shards together. I knew if I showed it to anyone she would be taken away, the sharp bits too dangerous for a little one to hold. So I took her quietly upstairs to my room. She had a very long velvet dress and I smoothed it down past her brokeness, the dress was thick and it covered all the damage.
And no-one knew, not for years and years except for me what was underneath that dress. But I couldn’t play with her anymore so she just sat and watched the games we played. And that doll never let on, she just gazed out on the world with her pretty glazed eyes.
Your probably wondering where this is going, but let me just explain. Or rather start from the beginning…
This year stared with me getting the flu, it was a evil one and made me feel like total death for about a week. After that I still felt off, nothing I could really put my finger on . But weak I guess, and achy. I took lots of vitamins and drank lots of water and got lots of sleep but nothing really helped. And I started to feel worse. Visits to the doctors came and went, tests were done, but nothing showed up.
So I pushed on, and ignored all the pains by taking lots of painkillers and drinking lots of coffee. But I started to feel very strange in my mind too, just like having the flu or when your really drunk, my head filled up with invisible, impenetrable fog. Impossible to think past, impossible to speak past, almost impossible to breath past.
In this greyness, I lost words that should have been just right there to speak. I lost ideas and thought’s in the fog, it was like being in a nightmare where I couldn’t wake up. And I was so tired, more than I’ve ever been, even when the kids were babies. I thought maybe I was going mad, or maybe I was depressed, so I kept very quiet about the pains in my legs and the blankness in my head. And I just sat and watched, doing as little as possible , sleeping whenever I could. I watched, in a the distance it seemed to me, as the year flew by.
Then one morning a few months ago I woke up in lots of pain, from the top of my head to the very tips of my toes was agony. And I was tired sooo tired. The energy required to open my eyes was too much. I lay there thinking if someone comes in and tells me I’ve been in a car accident I won’t be the least bit surprised. I wasn’t of course, but I couldn’t move for over a week.
Now I can’t walk far. And the stairs I used to run up with milly tucked under one arm seem like mountains.
If I do try and walk for more than a few minutes, everything seems to run slower and slower until I just stop dead. like I’ve run out of fuel. I was thinking about it, It’s a bit like being one of those inferior bunnies on the Duracell battery ad.
I used to be the one that kept going, now I very literally, slowly grind to a halt. I went for a little walk with the family yesterday for the first time in ages. By the the time we got near our house I was just shuffling , using millys buggy for balance, like an old lady, concentrating on every tiny step. Then comes the pain, everywhere! the pay off for any exertion is high 
The funny thing is the less I do, the better I feel. When I’m properly rested I can catch almost all of my thoughts and I can take on those stairs without needing to stop half way up. But as soon as I try and do things again I fall back into the darkness. Its hard and a bit cruel to be honest . Who wants to live just watching ? Sitting on that shelf, I seem to have my very own brokenness now, one that’s hard to see, Or understand .
I finally got a diagnosis this week though after lots of tests . I have something called CFS/ME , a chronic illness, probably brought on by an infection. Very little is know about it, but they think it has something to do with the way your blood cells work ( or don’t).
The doctor said it might get better, or it might get worse, it might just stay the same. But people rarely come out of it the same as they were before. It’s odd to think about that, how “normal” things were before, and how easily we can get “broken”.
As a wise Sting once said, “How fragile we are? “. Ain’t that the truth!
On the plus side though, it’s given me a lot of time to think. To pick out the things from my life I treasure. The really important things that are “worth the energy” and also weeding out the things that simply are not. Because now, I really do have to choose. So you could say in that way I’m lucky, Silver linings xxx
This post is dedicated entirely to Helen ( @HelenW71 ) and Kat (@secretsofabutterfly ) Without you both, these last few months would have been far more dark and confusing. Your both my hero’s ! X
To clean the oven … sometimes
