Does happiness really come from a planner? Nope. It comes from sauvignon blanc.

***Walking Dead Spoilers***

***Seriously, I’ll tell you who gets Lucille’d***

Last year I bought a planner. It’s a pretty well-known brand and has had a lot of success through some fantastic online advertising and very pretty pictures. Do you know how many days I used it for? Three. It took three days for me to realise that I’m not mentally unwell, I’m living in a dodgy body and dealing (remarkably well, if I do say so myself) with the problems that come with that. I don’t need to be happy all of the time in order to be a good person, and a journal certainly isn’t going to remove my character flaws. In fact, I’d say that if anyone is permanently happy and living with EDS then they are possibly more mentally unstable than someone who gets a bit down sometimes. Anyone living with a chronic illness, pain, loneliness, losing their career and saying goodbye to the possibility of having a family of their own is more than entitled to hate the world sometimes. In fact, I might start a “Fuck You, EDS!” journal of negativity and spite.

I stole this from Google Images. Sorry if it’s yours. I don’t have any “inspirational” crap to hand.

I hate this culture whereby positivity is good, negativity is bad; grateful is good, ungrateful is bad; letting go is good, being in control is bad. Except, if you test positive for gonorrhoea, that’s probably not good. If you are grateful that Daryl didn’t die, then you’re okay with the fact that Glenn did – is that good?! Nope. No one cares about Abraham. I know I’d prefer to be in control of my healthcare and have learned not to “let go” and trust doctors to know best because they usually don’t. Life isn’t always so black and white and I hate that someone is cashing in on making people feel bad for feeling bad! THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING.

So, my beautiful planner has been sitting in our book shelf for almost a year, gathering dust, and I’ve been feeling positive about not using it. I won’t let some beautiful, pastel and metallic stationery with upbeat quotes make me feel guilty for not wanting to “shift my mind set”. I try to be kind to people and to appreciate the nice things in my life, I try not to dwell on the bad things. I am a human and I am not perfect and I would never again waste £50 on a patronising, crock of shit journal. If I want to read some hippy mumbo jumbo about the habits of happy people then I will make my way to the Facebook page of the Avocado wanker. I have EDS and it’s a roller-coaster of emotions. My illness writes the rules in my life and me convincing myself that something is not a problem because I’m not upset about it is called DENIAL and is a sure fire route to me becoming very unhappy when I realise that I’ve been lying to myself.

I wish I’d spent that £50 on wine.

Ren x

NB – Okay, that’s not fair, maybe someone cares about Abraham. Someone, somewhere…