It can be hard to speak to friends about an illness . The difficulty, I suppose, is young men’s tendency to leave their baggage at the door and just get on with the gaming and banter, which me and my mates do to a degree.
Despite this, communication with my friends is easy. We might not speak much, but we support and look after each other as if we’d talked about life for an hour. We know a lot about each other with brief, nice conversations. Our digital space, where we do lots of our chatting, is an easy place to live, compared to real life.
My mates know the pain I’ve suffered in the seven years I’ve known them; we met each other at the start of secondary school. They know that when I’m offline for a prolonged period of time either my head or hands have gone. We do a lot with a little.
The first signs of my arthritis were before even I knew what the cause was. I went about 2-3 months not touching anything, only turning on my Playstation for Netflix or a quick chat with my friends, which still helps now. My mates understand greatly. If I say I can’t, or don’t want to, play a certain game, the usual response is, “alright bud”. They know my limitations. And so does my body. It’s very simple.
I’d like to shout out fellow Arthur’s Place blogger Sez; her great blog is called Riding It Out. Sez is also a fellow gamer and introduced me to an online chat with other gamers with different illnesses using Discord (more details at discordapp.com). They are a great bunch of people and are very supportive. It helps knowing other people who get what it’s like for days to be crap, people who understand what it’s like living with a permanent illness.
Without great mates or technology, i honestly don’t know where i’d be. I’m eternally grateful for all of you. Thank you. 🙂
Thanks for reading,
Charlie
Meet Charlie and other friendly folk on Arthur’s Place Social, our Facebook Group
(Any opinions expressed in Charlie’s blog are not necessarily shared by Arthur’s Place. Nothing that you read in Charlie’s blog constitutes medical advice.)
