Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and long-term isolation go hand in hand. It's there when you are so ill that you can't think. And it's there when you're well enough to want to climb the walls and weep from the excruciating boredom and intense loneliness. The following are not magic cures but they may help to take the edge off.
1) Take that empty time and rest
It's hard to turn away from the loss incurred by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when emptiness stares you in the face for weeks, months, or years. But time spent resting is time being restored. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system and releases healing chemicals.
Close your eyes. Forget the clock and the calendar. Contemplate the inner terrain. And when you can, sleep.
2) Read if you can
I couldn't for about a year. But when I could read again I spent hours every day on my bed escaping into another world. I tuned out the world around me with its hustle and bustle that had nothing to do with me.
3. Restful hobbies
During the year I couldn't do words, I picked up my knitting needles and made an enormous blanket. I never used it. It was the wrong yarn and weight.
Didn't matter. The repetitive motion and the awareness that I was creating something soothed me. I saw only the emergence of each new stitch and felt only the solid coolness of the metal needles and the soft warmth of the wool.
When I was healthier I played simple tunes on my piano and began, after years of being muted by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, to sing again. I sounded like a crow with a throat full of phlegm. But I sang anyway. Gradually the raspy voice mellowed and my spirit began to soar beyond my sickness.
4) Go online
I found Facebook and tried to think of people I used to know. I friended relatives, former schoolmates. Short comments were manageable, they could be read or written when I was up to it.
Any response triggered huge reassurance in me. People heard me. People were talking to me. I was still here.
I found an online CFS community where people understood what I was going through. I cried. I laughed a lot. I no longer felt so alone.
5) Talk to yourself
I did this for over a year. After dinner, I'd go to my bedroom and ... I talked. To myself. Complained. Babbled. Heard my own CFS-inspired fears spoken aloud. Listened to my own thoughts, caught my own self-destructive beliefs.
Began to slowly exchange my thoughts for healthier ones. Deliberately made myself speak words of hope whether I felt like it or not. More complaining. Eventually though, hope began to germinate.
6) Talk to others
Depends on whether you're well enough for the huge expenditure of energy. And it depends on whether or not you have anyone to talk to. But if it's at all possible, do it.
7) Write in a journal
If your hands aren't too sore or weak and your CFS brain is up to it, write to yourself. Write the letters you wish you had the guts to send to people who hurt you or abandoned you. Write your hopes and dreams.
Reinforce the sense that you have mass and weight and take up area, and are a real person existing in real time and space.
8) Go within
Sometimes that's all you can do. And that's okay. Even if you were the introspective type before, you may be surprised to find how much of yourself is actually in there.
Invisible to the world but inside your CFS cocoon, you are complex and multi-faceted, and worth knowing. A valuable human being, even when all you can do, is be.
9) Tune in to your body and soul
Do you have an impulse to get outside and feel the breeze? Do it if you can. Do you feel a painting coming on? Pick up your brush.
Do you hear a song in your head? Sit at your piano. Are the first three words of a story in your mind? Write them, see what follows.
10) Turn what has been evil into good
You have suffered CFS privation and loneliness. You have ached for the company and compassion of others. Your skin has cried out for contact with another.
Believe that the time will come when you'll walk into a room and sense that same loneliness in someone else. You'll pick up on that suffering and because of what you've been through, you will bring healing to someone in need.
I spent 15 years losing the battle against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Three years ago, I found treatment that worked for me, and now I am making a comeback.