And by “bad” I mean “really fucking awful” but I don’t want to come off as less than hubristic. At least in concerns to my pain, and not the day in general.

I feel like it should be said that I’m on my period, despite not being emotionally affected by them. I have never, in my 33 1/2 years of life, experienced PMS or anything period symptom-related, except for (you guessed it!) the pain. All I get is the pain part: painful cramps, painful pelvic floor, and a painful lower back. I don’t fluctuate my emotions as easily, but I am on a mood stabilizer, as well as an anti-anxiety medication, so I would hope my doctor and I’s medication plan is actually working.

Right now, though, I’m just… angry. Angry at being in pain. Angry that I have to feel it at all, and my period only makes it worse. I’m angry that I’ve picked friends I thought were good friends, and they’re not, and I’m so picky as is. I’m angry that I’m more upset with myself for picking them, than their shitty behavior. I’m angry that I’m angry, because while anger isn’t a bad emotion, it’s still a powerful one, and it’s not one I want to feel all the time, much less when I’m battling for my life through a monthly fucking period that keeps coming. I’m glad for it — it keeps my hormones regulated — but I’m never gonna need my uterus. I don’t need to explain it, because I know with all my heart, mind, and gut instinct I won’t need or want to use it. As much as menopause sounds like a nightmare, it not’s a painful period that makes my chronic pain worse.

I do want to be a better person, and blog about nice, cool things. I want to blog when I’m happy, or excited, or even bored. I don’t necessarily care about visitors, but I want to be able to blog when the pain isn’t bad, but I’m so busy catching up on the shit I couldn’t do because of the pain, that at the end of the day, I’m wiped mentally and physically. I think more than anything, I want to blog about not being in pain, and that’s never going to happen again. I wish I was more sad and hurt by that, but I’m so angry right now, all I can really do is mourn a life I’ll never have again. If I didn’t believe in karma/being a good person, I’d cast a minor spell, like, “how to get people off my dick”, but as witches know, do unto others, et el.

I know the pain will ease, and some of my days will get better. I know today is just one day in a line or many that will knock me on my ass, but it’s so hard to live life like that. It’s hard knowing it’ll come, or that it’s here, or that doing X, Y, or Z will exacerbate it. I used to wish for a lot of things if X happened, but now all I can wish, dream, and try for is being pain free, if only for a minute.

Before mid-2017, I had no problems putting words to paper, or typing up an essay to a friend. I’d apply every thought, idea, emotion I had when I blogged in the past. Once the chronic pain started, that got harder; it never went away, I kept writing, but I found other mediums that didn’t include hitting the “Add New” button.

And it took — very sadly, so you don’t have to point it out, I know — almost 7 years to realise that what I was blogging about, I had blogged about before. Anything I blogged from 2008-2011 were curated versions of the blog posts I’d done from 2003-2008. I blogged about things that may have seemed unique to some, but for me, was just a recycled version of another idea that failed.

What I realised, 7 years later AUSTIN, was that I had never blogged through pain. Other than a few online friends, I had never even seen a lot of representation in my own blogging community about pain, because we hide it. We were all scared to talk about our darkest thoughts and self-harming, there was no way we’d find a way to the top-level tier pain: the kind that lasts forever and never goes away. No medication, yoga pose, meditation app, aromatherapy, eastern healing will take away from your body what your body gave you. The pain is there, and it’s there to stay, and I do wish I had heard those words 7 years ago. It would’ve stung, but I wouldn’t have kept getting surprised and disappointed by everything I tried not working.

Another thing I never blogged about was dating and then the aftermath of dating. I’m pretty private when it comes to those things, and it always felt so superficial to talk about the hurt after the fact, but none of the good before. And because I let myself believe that, I let a lot of good stories go to waste. I’ve tried writing them, too, but they just don’t have the same ring if I’d done it, like, immediately. I did a lot of voice recording, and whether you’re writer or a talker or both (me), those kind of journal entries can help yourself. I don’t have a lot of friends, and I didn’t always feel comfortable talking to them about my problems, but maybe if I hadn’t been, they’d have given me some burns.

It’s Winter in the ~Western part of the world, it’s hot as shit in December in Florida and I am n o t o k a y with that, and E.R. visits continue to suck. WELCOME TO LIFE WORLD! After a grueling process of trying to find where to report a medical professional — grand spoiler alert: there is technically no place to do this electronically — I managed to find a contact form, where I tried to submit the following*:

* Please note this was done while I was still very sick and out of it, and also on heavy pain medication; I did not realise how truly articulate I can be when I am sick and out of it, but damn dude. I will now pat myself on the back for that one, and also try hard not to laugh that I thought to save this shit upon it NOT working and promptly passed out right after, apparently knowing not-sick me would take care of it (she fucking did).

There is so much to unpack here. It’s not the worst I’ve ever had — fuck, it’s ranked at 4 — but it was the one to make me breakdown, which hurts the most. I’m pretty fucking strong when it comes to being confronted about most things: I am easily corrected, I don’t get my feelings hurt easily, I am not prone to defending myself (particularly if I know I’ve done something wrong, or it looked like that from the other party). To be broken down by what I know is another run-of-the-mill emergency care doctor isn’t just heartbreaking for me, it’s also hard to get up from. I don’t, still to this very day, look down on emergency care workers, but I know which ones care and which ones don’t, and I seem to almost always come across the latter.

I rated her a 4, not because I don’t think the shit she said or did is okay, but because she immediately showed what a moron she truly is by that marijuana comment. Regardless of her tenure with her work, she’s not keeping up and/or reading about the things she goes out of her way to discuss, apparently, but she clearly is not keeping up with the basic ground work. Knowing what doctors think work for patients, and what the patients are telling these same doctors actually work, are to very different things that every single doctor should know.

She made me cry, yes. She continued the never-ending cycle of blaming the patient, yes. But she is so inept at something that is literally her career, and I’d take any night of my pain over being bad at something that I chose to do and made a career out of.

Sometimes my body sweats profusely but not in a way that’s relatable. I once had a friend describe “sweaty palms and feet, while feeling like I’m running from a giant ball that’s always behind me no matter where I go”. Accurate and relatable! Mine?

I feel anxiety all the time, and probably was born with that shit. I don’t have a thought that isn’t immediately followed by, “but [insert fake scenario here]”. When anxiety is a constant state of being your whole life, that ball looks easy. That ball can run me the fuck right over, because right behind the anxiety is the depression, and the pain, and the PTSD you sometimes like to think you’re adjusted to until you have a trauma response at 9:24 in the morning at work. If all those fail, I will immediately feel nausea that won’t dissipate for another 4 days.

I use my anxiety. I use my anxiety to put up boundaries nothing else can give me, I use my anxiety to stay alert, I use my anxiety to level myself out from overwhelming myself.

If I had to use a metaphor, I think it would be this: I am sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean. It hurts, because it has rock growth, and I’m bleeding from the cuts it gave me. The salt water burns, and that’s my chronic pain: I overworked myself on purpose, and am now seeing the consequences. The ocean isn’t my anxiety, it’s my depression. And I know it best, but what if there are sharks out there? Or this is the Pacific ocean, and there’s piranhas? There’s a wave coming and I have a choice now: do I leave the rock and let the wave take me and stop fighting anything I do not have the answer to yet, or the power or tools to fight? Or do I hold onto a rock that’s cutting me for fear of those answers? Or maybe there’s more options, and I’m seeing two options because it’s from only my own perception?

My constant state of being is anxiety. Of course I’d come up with an elaborate way of saying, “this is never going away :)” instead of just saying that, because I’m anxious about appearing stupid when I I’ve worked very hard not to be.

<p class=”warning”>WARNING: talks of internalised ableism.</p>

I do not know whose feet I should lay blame at, or if there are any, but: I was ablest. Internally. I was never externally ablest, because as a very anxious, depressed person who is sensitive to others emotions for reasons I don’t care about, I actually believed people when they said they were in pain. I did not believe myself.

There is a LOT of work I need to do about that. I pushed myself harder than anybody else ever did, and while I know my underlying issues play a big role in that, they are still my issues. I have to accept responsibility for not taking care of myself, or I will never learn how to.

I ignore. I pretend. I symptom manage. I compartmentalize. I do not say, “I am in pain” to myself, because to do that would mean I know how to take care of myself, and I do not. Self care is difficult for me, and it’s always boring. I do not want to soak in a fucking bath and wear a face mask that helps relax my facial muscles and do goddamn acupuncture. It’s not economically obtainable, and after all those things: the pain is still there. I want the pain to go away. I want the pain to stop. I want the pain to have never been there in the first place, because I now know “worst case scenario” in every arena now, and I’m tired of being aware of it.

I am tired of pretending I’m not in pain. I am tired of making other people feel better about my pain when it’s not my responsibility to do so. I am tired of carrying the burden of the pain, and all the knowledge that comes with it, when Google exists. I am tired of people choosing to tell me something about my pain, rather than listen to me talk about it. I am tired of people making me feel bad for any treatment I choose for pain that doesn’t affect them. I am tired of having the burden of this and still be looked at as the responsible and strong one, when there are days my pain makes me seriously consider how much longer I want to live at all. I am tired of compartmentalizing my pain to be that person to other people. I am tired of no one noticing how tired I am.

I want to stop feeling pain, but I can’t. But I can start to stop feeling bad that I cant stop feeling it.