So what's in a name?

Why "slow lane" you may ask? I'm a young man, just beginning his journey, heading into this big, bad world. Why not a "fast lane"? or a "moderately paced lane"?

Since 1999 I have suffered from an illness called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a name which I hate). I want to write a little about it and how it affects my otherwise normal existance.

Things that it isn't:

• Despite the woefully misleading name, ME/CFS does not consist soley of being tired all the time.
  
• ME/CFS is not about being lazy. Ask any of my friends or family and they will (probably) tell you that I am the opposite. Always doing something, and always with a to-do list a mile long. Its the actual doing it part that I have trouble with.
  
• If it was as simple as snapping out of it, then I would have already snapped out of it. So obviously the whole "think positive" thing isn't enough to fix it up. Believe me, I would have snapped out of it long before now.
  

So basically it's a neurological disease that is pretty misunderstood. Even I don't understand it a lot of the time. I have weak legs, which hurt a lot of the time, to the point where I walk with a walking stick when away from home. Now that is a sobering experience let me tell you! I also often have headaches and (the most annoying and embarrasing) I have a terrible short-term memory and cognitive problems.

I know it sounds kinda lame, but I do believe that suffering from ME/CFS has made me a Better Person. I will never know for sure, since I have no concept of how I would have turned out without it. But when you become ill at 15 you grow up pretty quickly. I wasn't able to go to school much and going to parties etc was a rarity, so I lost many friends. I learnt the value of a good friend fairly early on in this saga. I didn't do very will in my final years of high school because I was just too sick to either attend classes or learn. After high school I took several years off doing nothing in particular. But I got tired of that pretty quickly so this year I am doing a bridging course of sorts so I can go to university next year as a mature age student.

Being gay hasn't helped things either. I mean, life is hard enough when you're a perfectly "normal" teenager. (As a sidenote, I hate the use of the word "normal". My mother always says "normal is a setting on a dryer, nothing more." And I agree.) It harder when you are sick. It's nearly impossible when you're confused about your sexuality. I didn't come out to myself until a year ago (at 21) and not to my friends until early 2006 (at 22). I still haven't done the parent thing yet but its on the cards for sometime soon.

So my life is fairly slow. But action packed and (I think) fairly interesting. Hope you enjoy reading about it. And if not, hey, I enjoy writing about it.