““Whether I cry about it or accept it, there is little I can do about it anyway. I am sorely grateful. And that gratitude, that essential need to live off the kindness of those around me, has worn me into a shrivelled person, a smaller version of what I once was. It has done for me what the illness has not. It is the final angry nail in the coffin of my being. For me, it means that I always have to be nice. I can’t be upset, annoyed or grumpy because I owe everyone around me so much. I owe them my life. And so it rankles, slowly niggling away at me, until each smile feels like a betrayal, each thank you feels like another reason to give up, to feel shame, remorse and regret for everything that has happened to me. I””
