---

Mail-Order Magic

by Stephanie Burgis

 

Shopping online during a bout of brain fog was a terrible idea. Unfortunately, like everything else Hayley Bent tried to carry, common sense had a habit of slipping from her grasp whenever she was trapped in that state of thick confusion.

“I can’t take this.” Standing in the open door of her grandmother’s ramshackle wooden house, Hayley stared at the deliveryman, who waited for her to accept a barred crate from his hands. His van was still running on the street beyond her overgrown lawn, the driver’s door hanging open. “I’m sure I didn’t order it!” Almost sure. “I ordered . . . uh . . .”

Desperately, she searched her memory of the week before. She’d been crashing badly, stuck in bed for two full days except when she’d managed to shuffle/crawl to the kitchen or bathroom, and unable to do any of the house clearing she’d planned. Between her aching boredom and desperation to accomplish something, she’d thought she could, at least, make progress on decorating the run-down exterior of the house she’d inherited. As she’d browsed online, her gaze had landed on an image of wings and magic, strength and protection . . .

“A stone griffin!” she said triumphantly. “A nice statue to cheer up the yard. That was it! Not . . .” Her gaze landed on the impossible creature sleeping in a padded basket inside the deliveryman’s crate. “This.”

As if in answer, the baby griffin — around the same size as a house cat — snorted in its sleep. Breath whiffed from its sharply curved eagle beak onto the thick white feathers of its closest folded wing, while its leonine tail curled even tighter around its small gold-furred body.

“Sorry. You’ll have to take it up with the seller.” Setting down the crate, the deliveryman stepped back and snapped a confirmation photo.

“But there’s been a mistake! You don’t understand. I can’t . . .” Admitting her limitations to friends made her queasy; discussing them with a stranger made her burn with humiliation. Still, Hayley forced herself to continue. “I have a chronic illness — ME, chronic fatigue syndrome. Depending on the day, I might not be able to leave my house. I can’t even commit to taking a dog on walks. There’s no way I can look after some magical creature!”

“Take it up with the seller,” the deliveryman repeated, and jogged back to the still-running van. His final words floated back to her. “At least that thing has wings, right? Maybe it won’t need you to walk it anywhere!”

His door slammed shut, and Hayley was left gaping after him.

She hadn’t even had her first cup of coffee yet.

The front door of the yellow house across the street opened to reveal one of her grandmother’s kindest neighbors, a lean and elderly widower with dark brown skin, a dapper fedora, a flowered button-down shirt, and sharply ironed navy dress pants, following his two miniature poodles outside. “Morning, Hayley!” With his hands clinging tightly to their straining leashes, Mr. Goodman smiled and nodded. “All good over there?”

“Ah . . .” She swallowed. “Do you happen to know anything about griffins?”

“Me? Ha! These two rascals keep me busy enough.” He gave a rueful shrug as the excited poodles surged forward, panting and grinning and doing their best to drag him down his weathered front steps. “I can recommend a good vet, though, if you need one.”

“Thank you.” With luck, she wouldn’t. For now, she waved him off and then knelt to pick up the crate, ignoring the familiar dizziness that came with the movement.

Time to figure out another new challenge.

Hayley had been so sick with her first, seemingly endless round of Covid that she hadn’t followed most of the news back in mid-2020. Still, she’d hearted social media posts about birds returning to American cities during lockdown, endangered turtles finding new space for their eggs on deserted beaches, and wild goats roaming the empty streets of Welsh towns. Even in the worst depths of her illness, she’d been rational enough to dismiss all the stories about other, less plausible creatures poking their heads back into view during that eerie time when most humans were locked indoors and animals around the world experienced a sudden liberation.

By the time scientists and public officials finally admitted that so-called mythical creatures had returned to the world, Hayley was dealing with revelations of her own that felt infinitely more life-changing than any dreamy videos of purple-maned unicorns galloping across Californian hills, gold-and-orange phoenixes bursting into flame on European streets, or massive water dragons poking their iridescent whiskers out of Chinese rivers. With her own life closing in around her like a shrinking box, all she’d felt was a bitter sting of envy that those fabulous creatures were free to explore the world when she might never be able to again.

By now, she’d had time to work through that first grubby bitterness. She had lowered her expectations, narrowed her perspective, and taken the opportunity, with the inheritance of her grandmother’s house, to move from expensive Boston to this small town in mid-Michigan. Without any rent to pay, she could just about afford heating bills and local prices with the income she made from part-time remote work — all she could manage anymore.

In fact, everything in her life was managed and balanced with painful care . . .

“Everything but you,” she mumbled as she set down the crate on the battered old Formica table in her living room, surrounded by piled stacks of yellowing newspapers, old magazines, and outdated cans of her grandmother’s food. She opened her laptop beside the crate to hunt through her emails for a purchase confirmation.

A currently closed notice filled the screen of the online shop front where she had bought the “stone” griffin, but she found a tiny message the seller option hidden in minuscule text. She was halfway through typing her message when:

“Eep-eep-eep?”

Hayley had been living alone for so long that she jerked uncontrollably at that sudden series of chirps . . . and found herself staring directly into the griffin’s golden gaze over its predatory hooked beak. It should have looked fierce and off-putting, a wild and dangerous, unpredictable mythical animal in her space. She should have inched her chair away, grateful that it was safely caged. Instead, her mouth fell open as the griffin cocked its eagle-head, staring back at her with open curiosity. Deep inside its gold-furred, lion-cub chest, underneath its top layer of white feathers, a low, rumbling purr began. It flexed the claws on its big front paws and began to knead its padded bed like a cat.

“Oh,” she breathed. “You are gorgeous, aren’t you?”

The purr strengthened.

Obviously, it made no difference how friendly this griffin was. She still couldn’t keep it. But she knew all too well how it felt to be trapped. It seemed unbearably cruel to leave this sweet creature locked up now when it had been stuck inside that small space for who knew how long.

The griffin butted its head against the bars in a hopeful way she couldn’t ignore.

“Oof,” she said with a sudden, sinking realization. “I don’t have a litter box. We’ll have to see if the yard will work.”

As it leapt down from the table and picked its way through the stacks of her grandmother’s possessions, the griffin’s thick white wings fluttered around its sides in unwieldy jerks, sending piled magazines toppling. Was something wrong with them?

Ugh. If its seller didn’t respond quickly, Hayley would have to call Mr. Goodman’s vet after all.

By the end of the day, she hadn’t heard back, but she had learned that the griffin would turn its beak up with disgust when offered the dry cat food she’d found in an unopened (and miraculously still in-date) bag in the basement. Thankfully, it did eat several cans of tuna fish and seemed happy to use the cat litter and tray she’d had delivered from a local store.

Maybe she should have been annoyed to spend that money when she hadn’t asked for any of this. But it was hard to feel too bad while the griffin was prowling curiously around her house, chirping with interest and taking regular breaks to nap closer and closer to where she rested. God, how many months had it been since she’d last had any companionship?

Even before she’d moved away from her friends, they’d fallen out of regular contact. It was just too hard to set meetups when the others were all working full-time and their favorite spots to meet were noisy, crowded bars that made Hayley’s brain go haywire. Even when they did make plans, she had to cancel whenever ME crashes made bus or subway rides unbearable.

Dates would have been just as difficult, and anyway, she’d broken up with her last girlfriend before the pandemic hit. By the time it felt safe to go out again, she’d had to give up her full-time job. She couldn’t bear the idea of explaining that — or her condition — to potential partners. It was bad enough to hear her friends sound increasingly skeptical every time she canceled on them.

Now that she lived here, working from home and ordering online, the only people she even knew were her neighbors. So, she was on Mr. Goodman’s porch the next morning to get his vet’s phone number, she was in a rideshare with the griffin (in its crate) by noon, and ten minutes after their arrival, a vet with a high brown ponytail and a delighted expression was opening the crate on an exam table.

“Wow! We haven’t seen any of these here before.”

“Oh.” Hayley slumped. “So you can’t help?” It had taken so much effort to get here . . .

“I didn’t say that.” The vet — whose cheerful yellow name tag read Dr. Tessa López —winked as she straightened. “Personally, I’ve been hoping for a chance to see one of the mythics in person for years, so I’ve kept up with the literature. Here, now!” Dr. López clicked her tongue invitingly, and the griffin stepped daintily out of the crate. “She sure is confident, isn’t she?”

“‘She’?”

“Well, I’ll have to make a check before I’m sure, but . . . call it an educated guess. Mm, yes.” The vet ran her hands lightly over the griffin’s furry body, stopping to scratch at various points, and the griffin purred into the contact. “The first thing I can tell you is this isn’t a baby. See those gorgeous white feathers? She’s outgrown the downy gray phase and she’s well on her way to adulthood.”

“She is?” Hayley said. “But she’s barely the size of a house cat. I thought adult griffins were the size of lions!”

“The big ones are, but this one’s a stone griffin. She’s still a juvenile — around a year old, I’d guess? — but she’ll grow to the size of a female Maine coon cat.” Dr. López held out her arms in demonstration. “That’s why these ones are being trialed as house pets, but they’re still super rare. If I may ask — how did you come across her?”

Hayley winced. “I thought I was buying a statue for the yard.”

“You thought . . .?” The vet’s brown eyes widened — and then dimples formed in her cheeks as she clearly fought to hold back laughter. “Oh, the name. Stone griffins! Of course.”

“Yup.” Hayley clamped her lips shut before she could dive into sad excuses. Still, she couldn’t help noticing just how appealing Dr. López’s eyes looked, bright with amusement.

Her hair was gorgeous too — thick and shiny above her long, smooth neck.

Not that any of that mattered, obviously.

“I am going to return her,” Hayley said, “but I haven’t been able to get in contact with the seller yet.”

Dr. López hummed thoughtfully as she inspected the griffin’s wings, gently extending and refolding each of them while the griffin watched with close attention. “I wouldn’t be too sure that you will track them down. There’s a lot of weird stuff happening with mythics right now.”

“Do you mean the black market?” Hayley’s head was starting to spin again, but not for the usual reasons. “I was trying to order a statue. Am I going to be arrested?”

“Absolutely not,” the vet said firmly. “There aren’t any city or state ordinances about griffin ownership yet. Local governments are still trying to catch up — and of course, most of the mythics in the spotlight are pretty far off household pet material.”

“So, should I be calling a wildlife rescue organization?”

“She’s definitely not wild,” Dr. López said. “Judging by the sweetness of her temperament and her confidence with humans, I’d bet she was raised indoors and treated well —but it still wouldn’t hurt to have a bird specialist take a look at these wings. I have a friend who does eagle rehab near Grand Rapids. I’m sure he’d be happy for you to drive over for a free consult.”

“Right. The thing is . . .” Swallowing, Hayley forced herself into honesty. “I don’t have a car, and I can’t drive anyway. I’ve got a chronic illness, ME/CFS. It’s —”

Dr. López’s head jerked up. “Oh hell, I’m sorry to hear that. My cousin has ME — ever since we were kids. It’s an awful condition.”

“It kind of is, yeah.” Hayley let out an awkward laugh of mixed embarrassment and relief. Had anyone ever reacted before with such matter-of-fact understanding? “Anyway . . .”

“Don’t worry about the driving. If I tell my friend you’ve got an actual griffin he can look at, he’ll be on the road to you in five minutes flat. Do you mind if I share your address with him?”

“That would be great.” Were things actually allowed to be easy?

“Perfect.” Dr. López nodded firmly. “In the meantime, let’s set up a feeding plan and see which shots this girl should get.”

By the time Hayley got home, her head was whirling with fatigue and her legs were going numb. As soon as she’d freed the griffin — now tentatively called Mia — from the crate, she staggered back to her own bed, hanging on to the wall along the way to keep her balance.

Any griffin damage to the living room would just have to be fixed later . . .

But her eyes hadn’t been closed for long before a soft thump on the end of her mattress signaled that Mia, too, was ready for a nap. Hayley fell asleep with the griffin curled warm against her, one wing spread protectively over her legs.

She slept better than she had in weeks.

Hours later she woke to the pealing of her doorbell. The darkness outside the window made her jerk upright. She usually struggled to sleep for longer than a half hour at a stretch, so it hadn’t even occurred to her to set an alarm. Still, she felt surprisingly well rested now — a little wobbly around the edges, but refreshed and able to move around with ease.

Mia padded with her to the front door, where they found Dr. López standing on the porch beside a tall, skinny redheaded man whose eyes widened in cartoonish amazement behind his glasses at the sight of the little griffin.

“Oh my God,” he breathed, dropping to his knees. “She’s beautiful.”

“Hi, Hayley.” Dr. López gave a rueful smile and a half wave. She was wearing a vivid red jacket against the chill of the spring evening, and she’d let her hair down to form a glossy wave over her shoulders. “I’m sorry to burst in on you like this, but when I told Leo about your surprise delivery, he couldn’t wait to see for himself. I did try to call ahead, but . . .”

“I left my phone in a different room — I never heard it ring. But it’s not a problem, honestly. I appreciate the help.” Hayley started to wave them in — then stopped. “Oh crap, I’m sorry. Dr. López, I have to warn you, this place is a disaster zone. I’m trying to sort out my grandma’s old stuff, and it’s been a few months since I got here, but . . . well, it’s a pretty epic challenge.”

She’d been so crashed out from the cross-country move that it had been weeks before she’d even managed to get started. It was humiliating — her parents always asked about her progress on every phone call and then tutted at the news of how little she’d accomplished — but house clearing took serious physical effort, and whenever Hayley pushed too hard, she ended up brain fogged and flat in bed.

“Oh, I get it. Everything’s spread out for sorting, right? So it looks even worse than it did in the beginning, and you want to torch the whole damn thing to be done with it?” Dr. López wrinkled her nose sympathetically. “Don’t worry, we’ve been there. Leo, remember when you and I had to clear out Tío Abuelo Alejandro’s apartment and we found that terrifying spare room packed with mystery meat?”

“. . . huh?” Leo didn’t even look up.

His friend rolled her eyes. “In other words, Leo won’t notice, and I won’t mind. Also, please call me Tessa — I’m here for myself, not on the clock. This was too interesting to resist! And look — I brought takeout as an apology for barging in on you.” She scooped up two plastic bags from the porch behind her.

At the sight of the small white boxes piled in the closest bag, Hayley’s empty stomach rumbled. She let out a horrified laugh. “Okay, I clearly can’t say no to that!”

“Excellent start.” As she stepped into the house, Tessa dropped a wink that . . . Wait, was that actually flirtatious?

Warmth tingled through Hayley’s chest in irrepressible response.

It felt surprisingly comfortable to settle in at the old Formica table, adding two extra chairs from other rooms and nudging piles of magazines out of their way. Leo was too absorbed in studying Mia to eat, but Hayley and Tessa dug in to a feast of chow mein, fried rice, mapo tofu, and more while trading stories of student living and all-nighters fueled by takeout and endless coffee. Tessa’s second plastic bag was filled with meat for Mia — “bones included, in case she’s like an eagle and needs the calcium”— so the griffin ate her own dinner with contentment while Leo admired every inch of her.

“God, I need a griffin,” he groaned, interrupting one of Tessa’s stories. “I wonder if we’ll ever see a full-size one in the Midwest.”

“A full-size one might be a step too far, even for John.” To Hayley, Tessa added, “You wouldn’t believe all the wild birds Leo’s partner has to put up with in their apartment.”

“Is Mia a bird?” Hayley glanced down at the griffin, who was preening under Leo’s observation, purring loudly. “I mean, should I be thinking of her as essentially an eagle or a bizarrely well-behaved miniature lion? Which one is more true?”

“That’s the beauty of mythics. Who knows?” Tessa’s expression lit up as she leaned forward. “We’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding how they work. As a vet, I can tell you they shouldn’t. Just look at her! Birds and cats are completely different species. Their internal systems and needs shouldn’t line up — and yet she’s perfect. If her wings worked . . .”

“Oh, they work,” Leo said. “She doesn’t have full control over them yet, but there’s nothing wrong with these beauties.”

“So, does she need to be taught how to use them — maybe by one of those birds you work with?” Hayley’s throat tightened with a strange reluctance. Still, if it was what Mia needed . . .

Leo looked wistful, but he shrugged. “Who could teach her? These may be eagle wings, but she doesn’t have an eagle’s body. The usual methods wouldn’t work, because she’s a solid chunk of mass with sturdy bones. There’s a reason cats don’t fly.”

“Griffins shouldn’t be able to fly,” Tessa said, “and yet . . . !” She stabbed her chopsticks into the air in punctuation. “No one likes to use the word magic, but the more we learn, the harder it is to avoid. Why do you think I haven’t been pushing you to turn her over to an authority? Three years ago, that would have been my first response — but after everything I’ve read since then . . .

“There are no real authorities. The mythics are still too rare and weird. They’re also seriously intelligent in a way we’re not used to — and when it comes to stone griffins, no one even knows where they’re coming from in the first place! You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I’ve heard from private groups of vets around the country — but they all start with someone getting landed unexpectedly with one, just like you.”

“Where did you find this one?” Leo asked Hayley.

“It was just an online craft shop!” She groaned. “Seriously, it makes no sense. If someone were selling griffins on the black market, wouldn’t they charge a fortune? I paid thirty-five dollars. I thought I was getting a garden statue!”

“Like I said — weird.” Tessa scooped up more chow mein, her eyes bright. “Can you show us the shop?”

Sighing, Hayley opened her laptop, clicked through to the site she’d found the day before . . . and stared at the new message displayed on the page for Griffin Guardians.

Error. Site not found.

“That was definitely the URL,” she said. “I bookmarked it when I sent my message to the seller! Yesterday the shop was closed, but it was still there. Why would it disappear now?”

“Good question,” Tessa said.

Leo opened his mouth as if to speak, but Mia lifted her beak and let out a loud, pealing call that silenced the room. As he leaned back to give her space, she turned around, lashed her tail, and then jumped in a smooth arc onto Hayley’s lap. Mia nuzzled her feathered head firmly into Hayley’s chest, turned two tight circles, and then settled in to knead her claws on Hayley’s jeans, regarding the rest of the company with bright golden eyes.

“Like I said,” Tessa murmured. “There’s a lot more to these creatures than we understand. I think she’ll let you know if there’s anything more she needs.”

An hour later, as Tessa buttoned up her jacket, she took a last look around the living room. “Have you thought about getting any help with all this? I know my sixteen-year-old niece and her friends would leap at the chance to make some money with this kind of work.”

“Ah . . .” Hayley grimaced. “Unfortunately, I’ve been using so much of my energy on the sorting, I can’t take as much paying work as I’d like. So . . .”

“That sounds like a no-win situation. You do website coding, right?” At Hayley’s nod, Tessa said, “Why don’t we work out a barter system? Our clinic’s site could do with some work — and you wouldn’t believe the pit that is Leo’s rehab site.”

“Hey!” Leo scowled. “I keep the birds’ space perfectly —”

“Your rehab website,” Tessa clarified patiently.

“Oh. Yeah, that is a pit,” he admitted.

“Exactly.” Tessa turned back to Hayley with a warm, confident grin that made Hayley reach instinctively to wind her own hair around one forefinger as she bit down on her lower lip. The other woman’s eyes darkened for a moment before she blinked and gave her head a quick, clearing shake. “What do you think? Can we work something out?”

“That would be amazing.” Hayley let out a breathless laugh. “Once the house is cleared out, I could even look for a housemate to kick in some rent.” Until tonight, that had felt unrealistic — but now she let herself seriously consider the option.

What if she didn’t always have to be alone?

“There’s a thought,” said Tessa. “This is a really nice location. I bet you could find someone who’d be thrilled to live here, especially with a mythic as a housemate.”

“Look out for U-Hauls,” Leo sang softly.

“Oh, shut up.” Tessa elbowed him lightly, flushing. “Thanks for having us tonight, Hayley. Mia, it was great to see you, too. Is it okay if I stop by again in a couple days? My brother works at a butcher, so I could bring nice fresh scraps for Mia.”

Mia chirped politely, and Hayley walked outside to wave their visitors off. Afterward, she lingered in the cool darkness, soaking in the scents of spring from the overgrown yard and the lush pine and apple trees that lined the street.

As Mia padded out to join her, Mr. Goodman stepped out from his own small house. For once, he didn’t have either of his poodles with him, but he was dressed even more stylishly than usual and carrying a wooden walking stick that would have suited Fred Astaire. “Evening, Hayley!” He lifted a knobbled hand in greeting. “All good over there?”

“Actually . . . I think it might be.” She shook her head in rueful wonder. “What about you? You’re looking especially fancy tonight.”

“Thank you. I’m heading out on a first date.” He grinned widely and twirled his walking stick. “Wish me luck!”

“I don’t think you’ll need it,” she said sincerely.

As his ancient VW Bug drove away, Hayley looked down at the griffin who sat beside her, gazing with calm interest at the night beyond. There was no leash or crate to hold Mia in place, but from the proud tilt of her beak to her comfortably settled body, she gave the unmistakable impression of someone who found herself exactly where she’d planned to be.

“Magic, huh?” Hayley asked softly.

A low purr began in Mia’s chest as she looped her warm, furry tail around Hayley’s closest leg.

On her own, Hayley still wasn’t sure that she could manage everything she’d need for the griffin’s care. If she could draw on the help of an actual community, though . . .

Was she being unrealistic? Impractical?

With a commanding chirp, Mia tilted her head. Their gazes met, and a sudden vision, vivid and overwhelming, filled Hayley’s sight:

Her grandmother’s house, finally turned into her own.

New friends who understood her needs and her griffin.

Tessa sprawled comfortably on the couch beside her, watching Netflix shows together in their pajamas on an ordinary night . . .

And one final, perfect image that took Hayley’s breath away:

Mia, with her white wings extended, rising through the air into a blue summer sky above their yard, while Hayley, Tessa, Leo, Mr. Goodman, and a tall elderly woman Hayley didn’t recognize — yet — laughed and clapped and exclaimed at the impossible sight.

Another unexpected change had come to turn Hayley’s life upside down . . .

But for the first time in a long time, she was ready to believe that miracles, as well as tragedies, could happen.

“Come on,” she murmured to her griffin as the vision faded, leaving only sweetness behind. “Let’s head in.”

Her head was gently spinning after all the happy activity of her evening, and fatigue spread tendrils through her body, demanding rest . . . but even so, Hayley was smiling as she closed the front door behind them.

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Mail-Order Magic” by Stephanie Burgis, and if you enjoyed that then there is so much more for you to check out. From our archives, there are episodes 685, “Love, Your Flatmate”, and 303, “The Wrong Foot”, as well as flash stories in 378 and Miniature #2; there’s also two stories at PseudoPod and two at Escape Pod; and then there’s a decade and a half of short fiction linked on her website at stephanieburgis.com, a short story collection called “Touchstones”, half a dozen novels, novelettes, collections… there’s enough to see you by.

For “Mail Order Magic” today, Stephanie said simply: I’ve been living with M.E./CFS for over 20 years now, but Mail-Order Magic is the first time I’ve felt ready to write about it in a story.

Thank you, Stephanie, for the story and, given that note, the vulnerability and courage to write it.

Right. Buckle in. Big topic. Spent three hours reading and pondering how to talk my way into this one. The host notes reproduced on the story post at podcastle.org will include a bunch of links for sources, if you’re so inclined. Let’s go.

Reliable statistics on ME/CFS are difficult to come by. The UK-based ME Association posted an update to its estimated figures last year, saying, now, “we feel the estimated prevalence of people with a potential diagnosis of ME/CFS could be as high as 1.35million in the UK”, of which about 70% are Long COVID sufferers that meet the criteria. That total figure is about 1 in 50 people, by the way.

But here are the fun caveats, above and beyond the “we feel” and “estimated” and “potential” modifiers above; these are prefaced, in their article, with the shockingly blunt phrase “We don’t know precisely how many people are affected by ME/CFS in the UK today”; because:

·        ME/CFS isn’t always recorded correctly on medical records

·        There is no consistent diagnostic test, leading to varying rates of diagnosis regionally

·        There is an historical pattern of underdiagnosis, particularly in minority populations and deprived areas.

This all sounds frustratingly vague and uncertain for something that affects over a million people in this one country alone, doesn’t it?

Because. ME/CFS—the first part standing for something scientifick I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce out loud, but the second part short for “chronic fatigue syndrome”—presents as, to summarise the awfully ableist majority view on it in a way that, trigger warning, I am deliberately phrasing as hurtfully as possible, just being lazy.

And in our contemporary capitalist society, mired so deeply in the Protestant work ethic that we can no longer smell the bullshit like a cattle farmer used to the stench, being lazy is not only the worst thing you could be—freeloader, slacker, idler, waster—it is an individual failure, and more than that a moral failure.

I’ve known folks with ME going back twenty years or so. I had a bout of post-viral fatigue syndrome myself in late adolescence that knocked me on my arse for the best part of a year. And anyone who ever mentioned it always did so with the air of a deer who had just heard your footsteps: as quiet as possible, primed to bound away and flee. It’s a heartbreaking, learned response to so many people—especially medical professionals!—thinking that ME is made up. Sometimes they used polite-sounding, multi-syllabic terms like “psychosomatic” or “psychosocial”, but that still just means “you’re making it up in your head”.

To be clear, more recent research is proving measurable biological abnormalities, like neuroinflammation. It’s not made up. It never was.

Hey, guess what was made up? The 1970 paper that entrenched this medical received wisdom, which decided—without interviewing any patients or doctors, but just from reading case notes—that the ME/CFS wave following the Royal Free Epidemic of 1955 was “epidemic hysteria”. I quote this following line exactly, from the Abstract: “The data which support this hypothesis are the high attack rate in females compared with males”.

It’s happening to women, so it must be hysteria. It gave other supposed reasons, but the authors evidently felt that was the most important and ought to go first. Alas, the one and only way this framing has moved on from Victorian proto-medicine and its ideas on hysteria is that they have apparently never prescribed orgasms to help cure ME. Not even a silver lining to this cloud, huh.

The impacts of all this, needless to say, are monstrous. Being told by your medical professional that the life-altering—life-shattering—symptoms you are experiencing are all in your head and you must want to be ill and not get better has, unsurprisingly, a detrimental effect on your mental health. The primary intervention for decades has been “graded exercise therapy”, which is a fancy way of saying have you tried going for a run? Then a longer one next week and is layered in that same morally-judgemental assumption that the sufferer is just lazy and if only they got off their sofa they’d be okay.

Never mind that the key diagnostic criterion for ME/CFS is post-exertional malaise, i.e. doing too much and pushing through only exacerbates and worsens your symptoms. They were prescribing the worst possible thing.

One of the hardest parts of living with fatigue, whatever the cause, is that thinking you can push through—effectively accepting that moralistic framing of individual fault, and blaming yourself—is often the worst thing you can do, and you will pay for it for days and weeks. You have to learn to pre-emptively curtail yourself so as not to over-exert. You learn to limit yourself, make yourself smaller, cut off parts of your life that you can no longer fit into your energy budget. It becomes an act of self-imposed social and emotional mutilation.

And all the while your doctor is telling you that this is all in your mind and this is how you must want to live.

My reading on all this as a topic led me to all sorts of places, including, inevitably, some articles on ADHD, another disability oft-maligned as moral weakness. Jesse Meadows, in their essay Reject Success, Embrace Wonder—which opens with the marvellous line “I don’t ‘have my shit together’ and I’m not trying to hack my life — I have other priorities.”—discusses failing with the ADHD lifehacks they’d used in attempting to better align to society’s idea of success, as if you can shortcut around your problems to make them disappear. It then includes this paragraph that, I think, is important enough to repeat in full:

Because here is the painful truth: you have limits. You can’t do anything if you just try hard enough. That is a capitalist fantasy, a clever kind of propaganda for an economy that relies on everyone continuing to work and consume. Self-hatred, anxiety, and shame are powerful motivators, but I refuse to keep operating on such toxic fuel.

You cannot wish yourself through a disability. We do not, regrettably, and I cannot believe I am having to say these words out loud as the host of PodCastle, ugh, we do not live in a world where magic is real and reality can be bent by the application of will alone, even with a few fake-Latin phrases and wiggly hand movements. You cannot shame someone into not having ME. You cannot get them to just try harder, because that will only make it worse.

What you can do is understand, and empathise, and accept. Remove the shame from someone having to cancel plans at short notice because it’s a low energy day, so they’re not expending further energy processing that shame. Don’t judge someone for what looks like laziness: as per Dr Devon Price’s essay, Laziness Does Not Exist, “People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder.”

Which is to say, in summary, and is something that in all honesty is not even connected specifically to the context we’ve been discussing but just a baseline pass mark for being a decent person: believe people. Believe them, and support them in the ways they need from you. Because you don’t need the fake-Latin and wiggly hand-movements for that to feel like magic to someone, I promise.