Whistle a Happy Tune

I’ve been aware for many years now, long before I got ill, that I present a different front, a different personality to different groups of friends, colleagues, professionals. It’s easy to be who they want me to be because being myself has never worked smoothly, and because the different groups are so different and I take care to not let them cross this has always been fairly easy to maintain (apart from at large parties, where I used to just get tired!)

Of late though, it’s become increasingly clear that I’ve got more and more of my game face on to the world, full stop. I appear to be functioning well outside my home, my colleagues have no idea how much pain I am in on a day to day basis, or how off my head I am on opiate based painkillers (probably for the best that) some of the time. More alarmingly recently was when I discovered that my friends DIDN’T REALISE that I was in pain, all the time. They thought maybe I was a bit achey now and again. One of them told me I should just man up and get on with it, before I told him exactly how much pain I have been for how long. I’ve forgotten how it feels to not be in pain.

They had no idea.

I juggle work and a complicated home life, and I keep going and I am afraid to let my guard down. I can’t let other people see that I am like a swan, gliding along the surface with my flippers going like buggery underneath. I can’t let anyone see, because one of the people I am fooling with this maestro performance is myself. I can’t give up this appearance and let the whole thing go, because if I do, it might start to actually slide. Underneath is a girl desperate to stop, to curl up under a blanket, to sleep and rest and take time for herself, to cry and wail and eat nothing but custard, biscuits and coffee. That can’t happen, so I will continue, as Anna in the King and I, to Whistle a Happy Tune.


Make believe you’re brave
And the trick wil take you far
You can be a brave
As you make believe you are