Sometimes what other people are thinking doesn't bother me as much as what I THINK they're thinking.

But fair or not, people do make judgments and assumptions based on appearances. I often have to literally bite my lips to keep from explaining myself.

From the time my niece was a child, her friends and family were ALWAYS on her case because she just kind of sat around, you know, lazy-like. When people said, "Come on with us, join in the game, let's go outside and play", she would say, "I don't feel like it, I'm tired." Everybody, including her parents thought she was just lazy and would feel better if she would just DO something.

Imagine how everyone felt when her second child nearly died as a newborn, and was found to have a form of muscular dystrophy...just like her mother, my niece.

That's right, all those years she had been undiagnosed, and labeled as lazy. And all along, she really DIDN'T "feel like it".
She looked perfectly fine. Like a normal, healthy teenager and young adult.

I'm glad, of course, that I don't "look sick", but sometimes it would be easier if I looked sick on those days I experience mind-deadening, crushing fatigue and look "fine".