Procrastination and friendships - What you can do when you can't DO anything!

Most people crave a few sick days a year, to trawl the internet guilt free, eat bad food, and hide indulgently under the duvet. But when that is your life it becomes a prison. Most restrictive at all is the foggy headedness. This meand you can read books, and sometimes following films is difficult.

I rely on DVD boxsets and trashy tv - and also on procrastination tools like Stumbleupon and facebook . anything that requires minimal brain power, and, when I am really bad, minimal physical effort is a strain. The problem is that it's pretty miserable being isolated from the world and depression is a fatiguing condition, which all multiplies.

Friendships are hard. A good friendship is always going to be something that takes attention, but when you are forced to spend most of your time segregated from the world then it becomes nearly impossible. you cant' 'join in' on the normal casual socialising and it's embarrassing to have to explain to people why you cant do things, why you have to plan things so carefully. In many ways it is easier to have no friends... but that leads to a very lonely life, detrimental to an chance of recovery you might have.

When I first got ill I became a prolific letter writer. Any day I had the energy to put pen to paper, or write a few lines of an email, I did it. I wish sometimes now that I had kept copies of those letters before sending them as they make up an account of my life back then. As social networking and the internet bleeds into every facet of our lives, communication became easier. I hear so much FaceBook-bashing and I understand the arguments and opposition people have to a 'virtual' life but for me it is a lifeline. It allows me to have casual contact with people when I cant see them and keep some sort of relationship going with them.

Ive had a few really close friends over the course of this illness. 3 or 4 who I've told everything to and who have tried their hardest to understand what I am going through. I am grateful to them for their support. They are the exception to the rule of an iron wall of ignorance when it comes to ME, however. I, together with my whole family have lost friends over my illness. Many of my mum's friends couldn't work out why she had to nurse her 'lazy' daughter. understandably, when I started university I was so concerned about how to tell people I was ill. I never like telling people but you soon realise that to have a real friendship with someone you have to tell them - they have to know why you can't do a b and c, and they need to accept it and a good friend will simply value whatever contribution you can make to the friendship. Sadly these people are in the minority and as much as I don't want to have to admit it, I simply can't be friends with the kind of epople who aren't understanding, who don't make allowances for me if I cant do things. That hurts. I don't like asking so much of people, but when you have ME you have no choice.

School was hard. Being an adult with ME is terrifying in lots of ways as I loathe myself for having to take benefits from the government, but it is nothing compared to school. The nature of the beast that is the teenager demands uniformity and conformity - despite professing to the opposite, there is little a teenager can abide less than someone who doesn't follow the prescribed rites of passage.

So I played it cool. I was living at home anyway, so noone questioned why they didn't see me outside lectures. Being a fresher is crazy anyway, and everyone is disorientated (by alcohol and by their new surroundings in equal measures) so little attention is paid to a friendly face who is only a sporadic acquaintance.

This meant I could be a casual participant in these new group friendships without missing out on too much and without too many questions being asked. It was fantastic after the microcosm of school and I felt much more confident as slowly I could explain to my new friends why I was sometimes not able to do things and how sometimes I might only be able to come to something for a little while. I agonised over telling people, fearful of bad reactions and ostracising myself even more than I had to anyway. I have spent so much of my life upstairs in bed. Missing out on the most basic interaction with my family, let alone people outside my family, and the fear of rejection was overwhelming. But I had to accept that I am ill and I can only have friends in my life who accept that, bugger the rest of them.

This has a happy ending. I have been lucky in life. I pour my time into friendships and have been rewarded bountifully. After years of school - of people not understanding and not getting in touch and giving up on me, giving up on my parents because they didnt understand our family situation it is getting easier to maintain friendships now ME is in the public eye a little more.