I know I know, it’s been a while. Over two weeks to be precise, but were you really counting? I hope not.

Yes, I’ve been rather quiet and sort of gone to ground a bit. The reason? Well, if you’re a regular visitor to this little blog then you’re probably sick to your back teeth of hearing the word fibromyalgia, and who could blame you.

But the truth of the matter is that the F word is a constant factor in my life and again, yet again, it has hampered any attempt at living in any kind of normality for the last fortnight. Ergo, no blogging and virtually no work on the current WIP (Work In Progress). As for my social media activity, that’s been about as lively as an ageing, three-legged sloth on morphine.

However…

I’ve come to a decision!

No longer am I going to moan about how this condition effects me, which, just to remind you, is chronic, constant violent pain, absolute helpless fatigue, cognitive impairment, digestive problems and sensitivity to light to name but a few of the issues I have. Instead, I’m going to make a joke of it as a means to, well, fight back I suppose.

There’s the old saying that laughter is the best medicine (although for the common cold I think hot lemon and honey with a couple of paracetamol is far more effective) and if I can poke fun at my condition a bit more then it may just give me the feeling of taking back control a little bit.

Of course, being a comedy writer means that it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge to take the Mickey out of fibromyalgia, or so it might seem.

The thing is you see, this past couple of weeks have been exceptionally bad as far as the Fibro goes and it is so hard to exercise one’s sensayooma when feeling like that.

But, I’m going to have a quick bash at it now just to prove to myself that it can be done.

Here goes…

Fibromyalgia is a lot like an irritating teenager that just won’t give up moaning and grousing at you. You want to get on with life and enjoy it, but all the time there’s this acne-faced, greasy-haired, bad-of-breath, know-it-all little shit that keeps nibbling away at you and giving you the urge to scream “F*****g well leave me alone!”

It stops you short of doing anything.

You want to work but Fibromyalgia keeps interrupting you because it wants your undivided attention. You want to go shopping but Fibromyalgia just wants to sit indoors and be introverted. You’d like to do a bit of exercise but Fibromyalgia says ‘My legs hurt’ and so you just have to lie on the couch and listen to it bitching at you like a constant dripping tap. You want to go out for the evening but Fibromyalgia won’t let you have any enjoyment because it means that it has to entertain itself which it isn’t capable of doing without making your life a bloody misery.

You see the similarities between the two?

So what do you do? You let it have it’s selfish, snotty, spiteful little way just to keep the peace. And at the end of the day, I believe that’s what each and every one of us really craves – peace and quiet. Or is it just me?

And yes, before you say anything, I was a teenager once myself and I am speaking from personal experience of being one of the aforementioned little turds and I’m sure my parents would concur. We’ve all been there people, we’ve all been there.

So apologies for the silence of the last however many days it’s been. I’ve had a word with myself about doing better and even cleaned the laptop in anticipation of using it more and taking better care of the old girl.

It is hard to try and be funny when your body is wracked with physical pain and you’re hooked up to a TENS machine with your muscles liberally coated in CBD cream and your bowels are a solid immoveable object from all the painkillers you’ve taken, but I promise you I’m going to try a lot harder. Just see if I don’t.