Chronic Pain

If chronic pain was visible

If nerve damage was visible

If the things I'm good at hiding so no one has to experience the same pain and discomfort I do regularly, were visible.

Many days it would even look worse than this.

People don't want to hear about how I had to army crawl to the bathroom with torn tendons in my shoulders because my back was out and my legs were numb, or that sometimes when I did this --- I didn't make it to the bathroom in time, and I had to try and clean that mess up, too.

People don't want to hear about how I've thrown up daily for years, sometimes for hours, and then I still get ready and show up to the family outing or the thing I committed to because it's easier to go and pretend I'm fine then it is to hear "you don't look sick."

People get uncomfortable when I say I was on my period for over a year straight, and I was losing ungodly amounts of blood. However because I chose to not take medications for this because they created too much chaos in my mind the words from the doctor were (literal quote) "you can bleed out or you can be crazy." Not understanding that keeping my wits about me was the only reason I was still alive or functioning. This didn't matter.

People don't want to know that for 5 years, I couldn't sit for more than 15 minutes at a time without excruciating pain and my muscles solidifying and my nerves igniting. So I hid it and pretended to always be cleaning or doing something. I made myself productive and it was counter-productive in regards to my health, but it was the only way I wasn't labeled useless. That label would have crushed my spirit and I would have stopped fighting.

People don't like to hear about how I only slept in 10-15 minute increments and no more than 1-4 hours a day, for TWO YEARS. When I did sleep I would wake up screaming, disassociated, completely locked up in my muscles and ligaments or with a heart rate over 150. PTSD and trauma is real, and much of it was created by the fact that when I asked for help it never came. So I chose to endure alone. Sleep is your superpower and I couldn't ever let my body relax enough to regenerate or heal. It wasn't possible on a neurological level.

Thank God for my fiance who is the strongest person I know for holding space for me and being able to bear witness to all that most want hidden. He is pure spirit and without him I can't say my experience would be the same.

You see, people don't want to hear to see that if I actually let myself fall so I could heal I wouldn't be able to work, to show up and be a good friend or family member, to answer the phone, to feed myself, to clean my house, to be anything but a blob in a bed and I refuse to let anything debilitate my body so it can destroy my mind too.

and the more I hear things like

"but you look fine"

"you lost all that weight can't you just be happy now?"

"it's time to snap out of it I want to have a good day"

"I don't understand why it's always something"

"I think maybe you're just anxious"

"You're always thinking something is wrong but no one finds anything maybe theres just nothing"

the more I hide it because it's hard enough to be who I am without peoples ignorance and fear of experiencing the uncomfortable unknown making me feel worse. I not only have to process my experience, but I also have to provide protection and comfort to those around me who want me to stop being sick and also feel helpless and worthless. Except the only constant reminder for them is, well, its me.

People run and hide from me because it's "too much" and that is okay. I know many couldn't bear the burden that is my health and I would never want them to.

but Pooh never excluded Eeyore for being melancholy -- he understood that Eeyore wanted to be included anyway and through that inclusion he could help lift his spirits.

Depression is a direct result of prolonged exposure to pain that goes untreated, neglected and rejected. The more I deny myself the care I need for my body in order to heal the more pain I endure and experience and the more I isolate from people because slowing down or looking into the dark truths is too much for others and it all gets blamed on the squeaky wheel.

I wish I had a choice. I wish I could just stop being this way.

But on my journey to do so I realized that pain and emotions are a part of our neurology just like everything else in the body. All of my nervous systems were destroyed and I still managed to get off of my psych meds, lose 150lbs to prove my weight wasn't the problem, grow myself up and all the trauma that kept coming up anytime my nerves tried to re-connect, reversed my prediabetes, precancer and fatty liver, cleaned out my systems and changed my eating lifestyle and I AM STILL SICK.

But I will show up for myself and continue to fight for me and all others like me. I am not mentally ill, I am not crazy, I am not defiant, I am not disrespectful, I am not unwilling ---

I am sick and it's been ignored, neglected, disrespected and ridiculed so much that I will do whatever I see fit to protect myself. This is my body and as of thus far, all of it's progress has been because I chose to do opposite what I was told.

I listened to my intuition and my own intellect and it's been saving my life for as long as I can remember. I am not unwilling to work as a team, I just require that I be respected as an equal human even if I'm crying, in pain or lack the degree needed to be able to know things.

I know a lot of things I never had the privilege to go to school for... how am I supposed to get an education in this state? It would be just another thing I end up starting and not finishing because I am sick. Yet all the fault would land on me for not completing what I started because my body isn't capable yet I also cannot access the care I need. This is a very difficult contradiction to have to endure repeatedly, and it breeds mental illness in itself.

Chronic pain, especially over long periods of time, wears down the nervous system and can manifest itself with expressions of rage, depression, suicidal ideations and attempts, worthlessness and helplessness, and an inability to move forward because your body is really asking for help and if your illness is invisible --- you don't get any, you get medicated to turn off your symptoms. This, for me, made me believe that in order to get care and to be loved I had to shut up and keep all of my pain, symptoms and deficits silent so that I could have access to care, connection and love.

All it really was my was my nervous system activating and the 8th sense we all have the ability to access, opening up. Interoception, the ability to sense the internal state of the body, is wildly misunderstood and not commonly respected in the medical community.

I have always been able to tell, I have just never been able to use the words that made me important enough to be helped when I myself was in crisis.

If you're struggling with a mysterious illness, mental illnesses due in large part to chronic pain or the gaslighting that happens when you aren't believed, or just can't seem to get the help you need --- I see you, I hear you and I'm here for you. 🙂

You are not alone.