Mine. Yours. Ours.

Tristesse in the Waiting Room

Tristesse from the French word for sadness — describes a sense of deep desolation, bleak monotony or melancholy. It can describe both an emotional state and a colourless, unstimulating environment or situation — a grey kind of emptiness.
For many people living with ME/CFS, this is everyday life.
Waiting rooms become places where hope, fear and despair sit side by side. The lights are too bright. There is too much noise. The wait is too long. And alongside all of that comes one question:

And alongside all of that comes one question: Will someone understand me today — or will I be overlooked again? Then there are the small, quiet moments that say so much. Getting up to offer someone else your seat because you are younger. Even though your own body can barely cope. Even though you may actually be the sickest person in the room.
Somewhere between brief moments of hope and profound exhaustion, a state develops that is difficult to put into words. You are physically present while your body has long since exceeded its limits.
The photographs on this page are not isolated cases. They capture moments familiar to many people with ME/CFS: enduring, waiting and being expected to function even when the body can no longer do so.
This collection makes visible what so often remains unseen.
The quiet reality behind medical appointments.
The tristesse that is more than just a room.

A quiet soundtrack for moments no one else sees.