Idea

The Amazing Singing Feet. Yes, I know my toenails need cutting...

It's been a bad week, but today I am celebrating.  "Is she mad?"  I hear you asking. No.  But I have been listening to my feet.

Okay, yeah, probably I am mad, but whenever I listen to the pain in my feet, I find out what I need to do.  Usually it's as simple as: 'Sit down, you idiot, we're hurting because you've been walking around too much!'  But this week, they've been shouting through a megaphone pressed right up to my ear: 'LISTEN TO US!!!!!'

I'm celebrating because yesterday I listened to my feet in an active way, and they showed me how to move forward.  The pain was really getting to me, and I curled up in bed with my laptop and began to type whatever came into my brain.  All the whining, moaning, complaining, the anger and resentment, the 'why me?' stuff came out.  As if the pain itself was speaking.  And as I was typing, I realised I'm not the only one who feels like this.  There are thousands of us in Britain, millions all over the world, all locked inside bodies that are angry with us, bodies that have downed tools and are refusing to cooperate.  The difference is that I can write and draw.  And maybe, just maybe, there are people who want to hear my pain speak because it is their pain too. A community of people who think they are alone, and who need to know that they are not.

Lying in bed feeling pale and pastie.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to be defined by my illness.  I don't want it to be the only thing in my creative life.  But I've got skills that enable me to communicate how this dis-ease feels, and maybe I could use them to make my life and those of others a better place.

So here is the project.  To rifle through my journals from the last 12 years and find passages that relate to the experience of ME, then collate them into a manuscript, together with drawings and cartoons, and a bit about how I got here.  And then see if I can find a publisher who is interested in marketing to the ME community.  It may come to nothing, but on the other hand, it may motivate me to keep listening, keep moving forward, keep healing.  And in the end, it may help other people too, and that would be nice. Really nice.