When I graduated in 2015, I was on a high. I moved to London and started working in a job where I felt I could have a positive impact. I walked, cycled and ran around the city, met up with friends, went travelling, worked hard, and made the absolute most of every minute of the day. But then, six months after graduating, I was struck down by chronic fatigue syndrome.

My life fell apart. Suddenly, the things I'd taken for granted - walking, running, even reading books - felt impossibly exhausting. I had to stop them all; any exertion was followed by days or weeks of feeling wiped out. My brain couldn't access words. I felt dizzy all the time. Everything hurt. Whenever I thought I was getting better, I crashed again. On my worst day, I was stuck in bed and unable to move. I tried to get up to go to the bathroom but couldn’t hold my own weight. I had to crawl.

It was terrifying. I reduced my work to part time hours, but soon had to stop working entirely. I couldn't afford to stay in London, so moved back to my parents. I didn't have the energy to stay in touch with friends, and lost most of them. I spent 16 hours of the day asleep, and the rest passing time with the few activities I could manage: watching TV and sketching. The cinema became my happy place - somewhere I could sit in a dark room for several hours and feel like a normal part of society, doing a normal thing. But then the lights would come up, and I’d face the short but very long walk home, and more time spent in bed.

On the outside, I looked young and able. People would tut at me for sitting in the priority seat on public transport. They'd make snide remarks if I asked for assistance; 'Oh, I reckon some of my colleagues have chronic fatigue too, they're all so lazy'. I felt small. Invisible. But at the same time, I was lucky to have a hugely supportive family, and a partner who helped me through the hardest times - many aren’t.

After four or five years of working through my illness, I was able to engage with society in a more normal way again. I still suffered from some of the symptoms of CFS, but they were greatly reduced.

I am an anomaly; many sufferers can’t leave their homes for years or decades, and some are bed bound for life. It’s not a terminal illness, but it can feel like a terminal diagnosis: imagine a doctor telling you that, for the rest of your life, you might not be able to freely walk again, you can’t have dinner out with friends when you want to, you must not drive. That you might spend the rest of your life stuck in bed, your muscles aching constantly, rationing the little energy you have just so that you can still watch the show you like on TV. For the rest of your life, you’ll feel dizzy, heavy, too hot and too cold and too hot again, trying to explain to others what it feels like but unable to think of the words.

Roughly ten years after I was first diagnosed with chronic fatigue, I no longer present most of its symptoms. I can’t say I’m cured: I might not be, and am constantly aware that maybe tomorrow I’ll relapse. Maybe tomorrow I won’t be able to get out of bed, or go to work, or walk, cycle, travel. But broadly speaking, I feel better. And in 2025, I finally felt able to reconnect with an activity I always loved: running.

Since then, I’ve been able to build up my fitness, and now feel it’s safe to run a distance that ten years ago felt impossible: a marathon. On 12th April 2026, I'll be running 42km in Paris. This is a huge personal challenge, and my way of putting a middle finger up to a condition which dominated my life for so many years.

It’s also my way of giving back. Organisations like the ME Association provide support to the 450k-1.35million people living with it in the UK. Without their resources, I would have been completely lost - and who knows, maybe I’d still be stuck in bed, unable to walk more than two miles without thinking I might pass out.

It breaks my heart knowing that, right now, there are countless thousands of people in a similar place to me ten years ago; their world shattered by a recent diagnosis that they may never shake. Whether it’s £10 or £100, I would be so grateful for any donations you can make.