Looking closer to home when you are dreaming from your bed of the far of lands David Attenburgh has described might be the most anti-climatic symbolism you could muster. Home can become your prison, as awful as it sounds. You know each of the four walls of a room intimately to the texture of the paint on the walls, the last thing you think of is staying close to home. You want to see the world, visit all the places you’ve dreamed of.

I have a list of all the places one day I’d love to visit but at the same time, I also miss the travel much closer to home and the people that I am yet to visit in their cities and houses of choice. Poor Baloo hasn’t been able to show me his childhood home or introduce me to his friends as the distance is just too far for me to travel. We are in a long distance relationship so I’ve never seen his home. It makes me sad to think about it but I try to turn it around to be positive about it. I still want to eat pasta and gelato in Italy and lounge on a white sandy beach in some far off land but my first port of call will be to my family. To see the people I dearly love yet see far less than I’d like to.

One of my greatest sadnesses of M.E/CFS is the limitations it not only puts on me but the limitations that touch my nearest and dearest. We say no to parties and gatherings more than we attend. People need to travel to my home in order to see our family. We have found that journeys long distance are bad for my M.E which cuts off a good half of my family. My Aunts and Uncles and my cousins who I miss seeing very much. Thankfully with the wedding, we have seen more of them this year than most but I still feel guilty.

I would love nothing more than to be able to visit people in their own homes and spend time with my family. I want to go to the nearest city and go right into the centre and shop. Something I rarely do and if I do go in then its one shop visits. I’d love to be able to have freedom so close to home. Yes, travel is part of the things I would love to do but I want to start closer to home.