I Didn’t Disappear. I Was Busy Surviving

 23 December 2025

Author: Antonia @UnremarkableMe

For the last six months, Unremarkable Me went quiet.

Not in a dramatic, flounce off stage kind of way. There was no announcement, no carefully worded post about “taking time for myself,” no soft focus photo of a mug by a rainy window. It simply stopped.

Silence has a way of inviting assumptions. That something went wrong. That something was fixed. That I lost interest. That I moved on.

None of those are true.

What actually happened is far less cinematic and far more familiar to anyone living with chronic illness. My body became a full time job, and everything else was quietly downgraded to non essential. Creativity did not disappear. Advocacy did not evaporate. They were still there, waiting patiently, arms folded, while I focused on the deeply unglamorous work of staying upright.

If you have ever vanished from your own life for a while, you already understand this.

The last six months were not one clear crisis. They were a loop. Appointments that blurred together. Symptoms explained repeatedly to different people in different rooms. Being assessed, measured, monitored, and occasionally spoken to like a particularly anxious child who had wandered into the wrong office.

Medical spaces create a strange disconnect. You can be told you are “doing well” while feeling profoundly unwell. You can be labelled stable while your quality of life quietly erodes. You can be resilient and exhausted at the same time. These things are not opposites. They are roommates.

The NHS, like many health systems under pressure, is stretched thin. That is not controversial or hidden. Waiting lists are long, access to specialists is inconsistent, and patients with complex or chronic conditions often find themselves navigating a maze rather than a pathway. NHS England publishes regular information on hospital capacity and waiting times, which gives a sense of the scale of the issue on paper:https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/nhs-hospital-waiting-times/

What those figures cannot capture is the human cost of existing inside that system for months on end.

The hardest part is the middle. Not the crisis that triggers action, and not the recovery that earns praise. The long stretch where nothing is resolving but everything still hurts. Where you start negotiating with yourself about what kind of life you are allowed to want. Where your world shrinks to appointment letters, test results, and the constant emotional labour of advocating for yourself while already depleted.

This is where people tend to disappear.

Not because they have nothing to say, but because explaining again takes more energy than staying silent.

Unremarkable Me went into hibernation here. Not abandoned. Not forgotten. Just conserving energy like an old laptop with twenty tabs open and one percent battery left. Survival mode does not leave much room for commentary, even when the commentary matters.

During this time, I was reminded how easily patients fall through the cracks when their needs do not fit neat categories. How often complex conditions are fragmented across departments. How frequently people are told to “go back to their GP” as if that sentence alone constitutes a care plan.

For those navigating referrals, assessments, or specialist care in the UK, organisations like the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence outline clinical guidelines and pathways. They can be useful context, even when lived reality does not follow those pathways neatly or at all:https://www.nice.org.uk/

Mental health support also deserves explicit mention. Chronic illness does not only affect the body. It reshapes identity, confidence, and your sense of safety in the world. Anxiety, grief, and low mood are not personal failures, they are common and understandable responses to long term illness. Mind offers clear information and support for anyone struggling with the psychological impact of ongoing health conditions:https://www.mind.org.uk/

Somewhere in the middle of all this, something shifted.

Not a miracle. No sudden clarity. Just space. A small return of mental quiet. The realisation that I could think beyond the next appointment again. That I wanted to make things. That the fire was still there, even if it had been banked low for a while.

Unremarkable Me was never about being inspirational. It was never about pretending things are fine, or that humour magically fixes broken systems. It exists because honesty is often missing from conversations about illness, disability, and survival. Especially the awkward honesty that does not fit neatly into awareness campaigns or recovery narratives.

That has not changed.

What has changed is me.

I come back sharper. Less patient with nonsense. More protective of my energy. More interested in usefulness than approval. I am not here to perform resilience or package suffering into something palatable. I am here to talk about what actually happens when life narrows and you have to rebuild inside it.

This space will continue to explore chronic illness, healthcare systems, advocacy, humour as a coping mechanism, and the strange social rules that appear when bodies stop behaving as expected. It will also talk about absence. About disappearing. About coming back changed and realising that this is not failure, it is information.

If you have been quiet lately, this is not a judgement. If you are still in the middle bit, this is not a demand to hurry up and heal. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stay alive and wait until you can speak again.

I am back. Not fixed. Not finished. Just present.

And for now, that is more than enough to begin.

Love,Unremarkable Me