"The way of the tired person":life rules for the perpetually exhausted. Jo Walker, Jan 27 2020, The Guardian

[adambeyoncelowe]

It is. Some very understanding comments.

I find it interesting in that I was friendly at one time with a person with mild ME (she would class herself differently). She was financially secure and pensioned off work. She could afford to run a car, was well enough to drive and went out nearly every day. She used to go to various classes that lasted 3 or 4 hours, driving herself there and back.

A group of us used to go on long weekends away at special venues. Some of the people there were much, much more unwell and trying to survive on ESA or just DLA. Most of us just wanted a break, but she constantly wanted to talk about "this illness". She moaned more than everyone else put together.

Snag was she was out and about more that the rest of us put together too. It often used to cross my mind that she must give people a wholly misleading picture of what living with ME was like.

Please understand I'm not saying she wasn't sick. She just had no concept of how relatively lucky she was and liked to moan about her life. A lot.

I suspect that because she was doing so much, she probably felt awful all the time, so she felt she had to talk about it. Whereas, if she'd taken the time to stop occasionally, perhaps she'd feel not quite so awful all the time, and wouldn't have needed to go on about it.

Then again, some people are just self-obsessed.

 

[Invisible Woman]

she probably felt awful all the time, so she felt she had to talk about it.

She probably did feel awful all the time. I wouldn't dispute that for a second. The thing is so did the rest of us. We all had to creep off and have naps every now and then when we felt we were going downhill. If you felt as bad as she claimed there's no way you could sit there chatting for hours. This wasn't a newbie, she'd been diagnosed as long as the rest of us.

Every symptom anyone had, she had as bad if not worse. Even knowing some people were really hard up, she'd be talking about how much she'd spent on something and then moan about how little she had because of having ME.

I don't think she could see there was a level of disability beyond her own. Combined with a tendency to self obsession as @adambeyoncelowe says.