Fling your love to the stars

I have been unable to articulate to you what I am feeling. I keep writing it and feeling it is not enough, she is so beautiful my Kae, so angelic that the words I write cannot touch her or do her justice. My heart is weighed down, a clunky stuttering beat as it tries to compute the idea of what it must feel like to her. Perhaps like the tragic heroines of years gone by who walked calmly, almost sleep walking, their elegant nightgowns weighted down, stepping delicately over the slowly gurgling stream into the deeper waters where the current swept them along, their last vision of the stars before the pockets full of river rocks smoothed by the rushing water and tumbling momentum dragged them silently beneath the glassy surface.

She is my Kae, a flightless angel, whose boundless depths of love and wells of beauty of spirit always remind me of my flaws. She would hate that. Admonish me harshly for saying such a thing. For that is not how she sees others. Kae does not see what she does or is as extraordinary. She is unaware that she is so ethereal and otherworldly, she has lived in her skin her whole life, to her it is normal to be just so. But to those of us touched by the glow of being near her, she is a majestic and beloved spirit to be awed.

Kae has been trapped in the dark for a while. Years really, but there's been light let in for long stretches, and then again the shutters slam shut. Now she is taunted and maliciously harassed by pain and an exhaustion so deep and harrowing that only those who have nearly died of exhaustion can come close to understanding, and still you will not understand unless you have experienced it day after day after mind bending, soul destroying day.

Her brain is playing tricks on her, the river calls, waits until she falls into fitful dreams and coos her name in a melodious whisper, the rhythm of water gurgling over rocks mocking her with echoes of her name through the trees. The invitation taking root in her psyche when she is defenceless against it's malignant charm.

Never have I known someone so willing to selflessly step up, to surprise, to support and fight for you and most importantly, to simply be with you. Never have I known a heart so big, a love so dazzling , a well of selflessness that runs so deep there is to my knowledge no end. Kae is what we all wish we could be. She is not perfect but she is what most of us strive for.

My Kae (I say my Kae but she is not just my person, she is many people's person, her heart is that big) is going through the biggest battle of her life and unlike people with recognised illnesses, she is battling an invisible and insidious illness so extraordinarily brilliant in it's trickery that it hides from doctors while it wreaks havoc with your body, your cells, your organs, your limbs, your pain receptors, your perception, your gut, your balance, your spirit, your soul, your heart and everything that is you. How do you fight that which you cannot see and no one except those who fight beside you, a secret army of warriors, even believe it exists, spare a few special doctors who believe in that which cannot be seen or labelled.

So I am asking you to stand with us, the secret army of warriors who fight without armour, without weapons, without the support we have earned, without medals for the bravery and courage in the face of such inescapable horror day after day. We go without acknowledgement and mostly we've all grown used to relying on our battle mates as only they know what it truly feels like, apart from the few carers privvy to witnessing the extraordinary war that we battle every day like clockwork.

No I am begging you. As I have begged of you before to fight for me and others, I am begging you to help me will my darling Kae, my most gorgeous and selfless friend who is so very tired, I am begging you to help me. Will her on. Join a chorus of love and prayers and good vibes and healing meditations and send them into the universe so that she may be surrounded by your love and the light will be forced into her lungs.

Send her all the love and light you would your most beloved. Because my Kae would do it for you without a second thought. She reunited a family who were separated on other sides of the world after years apart and refused to admit she was involved, and yet our very sick and beautiful friend knew it was her and she got to see her grand babies and spend a very special Christmas with them. She forced me to see a doctor and when I had no money she forced me to take a loan from her that she refused to allow me to pay back. She sends random gifts just to amuse herself. She finds beauty in the simple and every day things and has the most creative and instinctive eye for capturing moments most of us either don't notice or take for granted. She sends thank you cards to people who think of her when she can barely lift her head, let alone see the page or muster the energy to force the pen to the page in eloquent coherent sentences. She sponsored an elephant for a group of us, a sick group of friends from all of the globe that she networked together – my twinkling, glistening orb of friends like a spider web around the world – she was the catalyst. She remembers everyone's birthday, anniversaries including the awful ones, the days of those that were lost. She is an angel. She is my angel. She is many people's angel. She is not allowed to be another angel who is has their wings bestowed upon them too soon. We will not allow them to be fitted. She will stay with us because we will fight for her.

We have too much to do. Adventures together with our friends. A commune to run. And although I may never get to have children, neither might Kae, but we will have each other and our most beloved friends and family. My love pours from my heart into this page like she were my child and I were cradling her in my arms soothing her with a lullaby, whispering to her about all the stars in the sky and how they will never ever come close to shining as bright as she does. I could not love her any more.

Please I beg of you help me keep this angel here on earth. Fling your love to the stars and wish it back to her.

NB these two beautiful photos above are Kae's work, to enjoy more of creative work, click on either photo to be taken to her gorgeous blog.

Our dear friend Cusp started this candle vigil to show Kae how much love is in the world for her, please take just a moment click on the photo and light a candle and send some love and light.

Please note, since writing this - just today - I have heard some news that Kae's spirits have lifted a little.  But I also heard today that we lost another Lyme warrior who gained her wings.  So please know, today Kae be okay, tomorrow she may not be and again and so on and so forth.  It is an arduous and awful fight and this is as pressing in this moment as it was the moment before.  Perhaps even more so as the reality hits home that we have lost one of ours and that reality is tangible, touchable and real.  Please help us fight.

Change

Change use to be my bag. I used to thrive on it. It was exciting and imbued with endless possibilities. It probably started from my childhood, we moved every couple of years when I was a kid, we used to buy or build and then we'd move. Most of the houses – something like seventeen – were in Ferny Grove. The furthest we went, apart from a few years at McDowell before there was even a roundabout (oh that horrendous roundabout) was Toowoomba for six months, well that was a weird trek into a parallel universe. They put all the new kids (including my little sister Rhiannon who was in grade one, I was in grade three) in the new class room with the new teacher. We were segregated from the Toowoomba kids.

One bonus was I did year five work and she did year three work. But it was a strange place for us – no offence to those of you that come from there it's a beautiful country town but it's not so welcoming for newcomers, or at least it wasn't – so we moved back to our old stomping ground.

And I went to Ferny Grove pre-school, Primary School and High School. But we continued the tradition of moving house frequently. And I liked it. Then when I started working as soon as was legal, fourteen and three quarters I got jobs, starting at the horridly unprofessional Snow Deli at Brookside where they were incredibly unhygenic and frequently shorted me or overpaid me. Stupidly I was honest and would tell them (they would make me work it off, rather than taking the over-payment back, keeping in mind in those days it was cash in an envelope pay), then when they under paid me I'd have to get my Mum in to argue with them and look through their books to prove they'd fucked up. I was already smarter then their manager at fourteen. So it inspired a series of jobs, and at one stage I worked three. Full time at Mountain Designs head office Monday to Friday, Thursday night and Saturday at Woolworths Stafford Deli and Friday nights and Sundays at the Ferny Grove Bowls Club. Plus when I could the private boxes at the football – union or league – as the bar attendant serving lovely plumbers and tradies or asshat lawyers and barristers who were always the most problematic.

I then moved into temp work and loved that too, it fulfilled my need for change and my love of meeting people and I was very comfortable with learning new things I was intelligent enough that I quickly adapted to new environments and became friends with staff. I became a favourite of many companies because of my ability to seamlessly transition into their teams.

Then I worked the longest period I ever worked anywhere – four years at Education Queensland – and ironically had just started a job with the Human Resources Rehabilitation Unit as an Executive Assistant when I got sick, very, very sick. And I tried to return to work, but I kept falling asleep and falling over. And I was young and I was naïve. A woman I used to work with saw immediately what I had, she told me her brother was sick just like me. He had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And pretty quickly I was diagnosed with it. Thankfully because that doctor saved my life. I lost my job because I was a casual, which isn't right and wasn't right. My old boss and dear friend went to bat for me. I should never have been casual. They should have made me a permanent employee by then. But the new director of HR had in for me. She really didn't like me and frankly in retrospect I didn't give her much reason to. I was too sick to work, and yet I would go out drinking. I did it because after spending six months as a saint doing everything right, eating barely anything, restricting my diet, resting and working barely existing, I didn't get any better. And when I drank it gave me false energy and for that time I felt normal. I was such a gregarious and outgoing creature. I had worked full time, played netball up to seven days a week, spent lunches with friends every day and always had weekends full of plans. Then bam, nothing. Four walls, revolting food, endless torture and no escape. So I drank. And she heard about it amongst other things I did that were not indicative of a sick person. But I was a kid. And I had lost my world to a torturous illness. I couldn't deal. I sent out mixed messages and I confused people.

Anyway.... that's that. So this incredibly gregarious, outgoing, young woman with extensive and varied social circles was suddenly slammed shut into a box back when the internet was a major luxury and people just didn't really call you. I lost myself. I self sabotaged. And then I would be good and nothing would improve, giving me no incentive not to find at least some happiness in company while drinking instead of the stark isolation I had been locked into. It was and is the most soul destroying and hope crushing world to be trapped in.

It has changed me. I am not who I was. I used to have parties to celebrate my birthdays, populated by seventy or more very close friends and they were legitimately close friends.  I was very good at maintaining friendships. Now the limit is no more than two to three people – talking very softly one at a time – or I go into the foetal position shaking and sobbing hysterically because it feels as though my head is being stabbed repeatedly by knives. I lost the ability to maintain friendships with people I had known and loved my whole life, because I couldn't even look after myself. They thought we just grew apart when really they just grew away from me and I never saw them again. They stopped reaching out. And although I still felt exactly the same adoration about them, I simply could not reach out. I became invisible, translucent and weightless. A non entity.

So time stopped then for me. Every thing since has been grey with occasional slashes of colour. Garish reds or the very rare dash of blue with beautiful dots of sunshiny golden yellow.

Now I am me. A shell of she. I shiver and shake at the idea of change. I get overwhelmed with the thought of it all. I used to thrive on it. I loved it. Now it is so complicated. My parents are poor age pensioners. They are my carers. And they're both sick. I am a disability pensioner and I cannot even get myself in or out of bed alone any more. We suddenly have to move house. And it's not like the adventures of my youth, I am a cowering mess. There is still a steel will but it is weakened and cracked.

On the weekend my sister Rhiannon and my friend Fiona came to help pack and I barely helped, I could do much except direct really. And yet by dusk I was projectile vomiting, with gastro, clammy with chest pains and unable to walk, my head exploding with a mitochondrial migraine.

Change. We have to move after just under two years and I'm not even fully unpacked. The house we loved just fell through. We don't have bond. We can't afford movers. We have nowhere to go. We can't afford double rent in case we do find the right place (dual living, hi-set, pet friendly) too early. The owners are likely to be asshats and refuse release our bond even though we've done everything right,  They're simply that way. The roof leaks, the lights short out, there's no insulation so we have ridiculous electricity bills because I cannot moderate my body temperature (they promised to drop the rent as we pay way over market price  due to the urgency of finding a house to move into, and predictably they then reneged their offer), there were no curtains or rods … I had to do everything to adjust this house to make it safe for me and now we have to move. And I can't work out the how of it.

We will. I will. I'll find that girl I used to be and wrench her out and try to make use of her for the small things. I can't do the big things. I'm too busy trying not to die. But I can summon her up for the little things. The bond loan. A charity loan. Commandeering volunteers. Something.

Please just pray for me, send me good vibes, meditate on good health and a beautiful change, do whatever you can to send out love into the universe for me and my parents. Because we've been through enough. And it shouldn't be so hard all the time. I need a break from the torture.

Help me wrench her from the shell. Help me please? Help us. We need it.

And thank you. For being in my life For hearing and seeing me. For loving me. For your unconditional unwavering friendships – especially those forged online in sickness, in the dark – you are the best of me. And I love you all xxx