I'm not sick enough.

I’m not sick enough. It's a weird sentence, right? No one wants to be sick; no one wants to be in pain. Why would I say it? Do I want to be sicker? To understand why I say this sentence, you have to understand something about me. 

I have chronic pain.  

I am in pain to some degree every day. I take medication every day to try and control the pain attacks that bind me to my bed for days after. I had surgery in April to try and help. The thing is, I try so hard not to seem sick. 

Maybe it’s my need to feel accepted, maybe it’s my own denial of my pain; but I try and I tire myself out every day to try and seem normal, healthy, pain free. I don’t know, but I wish I didn’t. I wish I could be honest. I wish I could say I am having an attack; I wish I could say I can’t carry things some days, I wish I could be honest. 

I always have tried to be funny, kind, I always wanted people to be happy around me, relaxed. I just wanted them to enjoy my company so they would want to be around me, so they would continue to be around me, so I wouldn’t be alone. Growing up, even now I usually am. Who wants to be alone? Who wants to be lonely? But who wants to be with someone in pain? Who wants to be with someone complaining or dazed from medication or nausea? From experience, no one. 

My family, twin and mother in particular have seen the worst of my pain. It hasn’t been fair on them. The fact that they have seen me beg for death is honestly one of the things I wish I could have protected them from because I know it was beyond excruciating for them. But even so, they both have done something that has made me feel worse. 

On the way to a family trip, not too far from where we live. My mother denied that I have chronic pain. I understand not thinking I am disabled, but to deny the pain I have had for six years was crushing. Yes, after the surgery my pain attacks were not as long, they were further apart and didn’t force me to go to the hospital as long as I had strong painkillers to hand. Since I started medication to help the remaining pain it has improved slightly and I am starting even more medication soon to try and solve other things that might contribute to the pain. I am slightly better. But I still am in pain, every single day. Some days it still hurts to breathe. If that is not chronic pain, the doctors and I don’t know what is.  

My twin, didn’t mean to hurt me. What she said makes total sense and I don’t blame her. She simply said what is true. I am a burden, at least some of the time. She doesn’t want to deal with me and my pain anymore and I completely understand. Neither do I. 

If I was sicker, if it was worse. If people could see it. If people could feel it. It would be so much easier. I'd get seen to quicker in hospital, I wouldn’t have to carry heavy things on bad pain days or days where it could easily turn into one. I wouldn’t have trauma flashbacks of when I wasn’t believed and was laughed at. Does it make sense now? 

Someone I follow on instagram, laraeparker, has worse pain than me. Yes, we have different conditions and everyone is different but I simply can do more. One day my surgeon said I might possibly be back to normal. But she is worse than me and even she isn’t believed sometimes. Hell, even people in wheelchairs are told that they’re faking. 

Maybe I should just get a spoon tattooed on my forehead. 

(Spoonies unite!)