The cycle of doom that I’m about to describe definitely applies to people with hypermobility syndrome / Ehlers Danlos syndrome, but it can also apply to various chronic health issues, anything with a strong fatigue component and anything that reacts powerfully to stress.
BOOM
Sometimes, I think nothing is real until I write about it.
I’ve been avoiding this, as though if I don’t write about it – if I don’t let the feelings and thoughts come out the way they need to – then it didn’t happen.
If I don’t write about it, I can still believe that nothing has changed. If I go to that little townhouse in Newmarket, and lean heavily on the doorknob (because it got stuck, and even though her dad fixed it, we’d all been shoving it so hard for so many years that it was muscle memory), I’ll see Penelope sitting on the couch with an enormous tapestry frame resting across her lap, copper-brown hair fuzzing around her head. Behind the ever-present glasses, her eyes are quiet and focused, and her face is almost stern, an expression of an unflinching rationality that has been mistaken for coldness, for aloofness.
