Boy do I know how that is!! My sister comes by sometimes and is like "You should exercise more, you'd feel better about yourself." Really? And you know that.... how? Or my personal favorite "Why don't you get out more, it would do you a lot of good to get away from the house." Okay, high anxiety, deep depression, severe PTSD, bipolar mood swings that we won't even discuss, and the pain cause from Fibro. Which one of these should I throw at her first?? Besides how am I supposed to write a book from the front seat of the car? Yeah, let yourself go my foot. Fibro got a hold of you and yanked it out from under you is what happened. Don't even listen to the words, spoken or not.

Reading experiences from others on top of what I encounter, I feel like there's this "glorious" dichotomy with invisible illness that people will blame/attribute medical problems to unhealthy lifestyle if they think a person looks unfit. And when a person is fit-looking, they'll roll out the classic "but you don't look sick," and it must be laziness, attention-seeking or a scam of pain pills.

Many people in society are blissfully ignorant about what chronic pain/fatigue/many other things are like to live with day by day. Good for them, but ignorance is still aggravating. It's good to vent in a place like this - not being understood can be rather maddening.

Sorry you had to put up with that. We here all know that any person being thrust into life-changing medical nonsense didn't "let themself go," they're not failing somehow. You're succeeding, because you're still trying to make the best of things. We here also know that any of those judgemental people would struggle just as much or fare even worse.

Let me counter-balance her words some with a fibro-warrior fact: You're awesome. We all are. So just come here to DS to remind yourself of that when ignorance is rife.

Thank you for the inspiration! so true, sometimes ya just gotta look at yourself in the mirror and say: everything's gonna be ok!