I was wrong

Last time, I spoke about freedom, change, and hoping for a positive, less painful future. You’ve read the title, I was wrong! I was wrong about feeling better, holy shit was I wrong about that. The IV treatments heightened my pain so much that I lost the little freedom I thought I had. I started having severe PTSD, I wasn’t able to write. I couldn’t rely on my body to do anything!

One of the most psychologically painful things, about being in chronic pain, is being in a beautiful place, knowing you should be enjoying yourself, and you just can’t. It’s looking at the sun shining and not feeling the sun rays, it’s being on a beach taking pain killers and nausea pills. We’re on an island paradise and I can’t wait to leave the restaurant so I can lie down, I’m on the beach and everything I do induces my pain. I cut conversations short because my headache has spiked and I’m worried I won’t make it out of the water. I don’t eat because I don’t want to induce abdominal pain. I don’t go to the party because I won’t be able to stay.

The other side of it is, you have to remember that no one else is having this experience, so you go through the motions. You have to be ok so that everyone else can enjoy their time. You have to be grateful that you are able to be in pain, in this beautiful place. Someone somewhere is in pain and not on the beach. Yet, forcing yourself to be grateful for this place, along with the pain, seems more detrimental to your mental health than anything else. I’ve spoken to you about all the lying and pretending chronically ill people do just to participate in life. If you have to have pain, I wish you could pick and choose the days you have it. I do a lot to try to delay or “organize” my pain. But that’s the thing with chronic pain, it will come, it will devastate and it doesn’t care what you think.