#itsanoriginstory

[theoutletonmychest]

My Lonely Life (The Talk), Part II

I'm unsure how to start.  Pain is so very subjective.  Something that knocks one person on their ass can be shrugged off by someone else.  It's also hard to describe, so forgive me if you just can't see it. Truth be told, I don't seem to remember much about how my pain progressed.  Life after understanding my fatigue all starts to bleed together.  I had to start saying "no" to people asking me to do things, and I found that people don't like that.  Say it enough times for any reason and they stop asking, even if you beg them not to.  As my friends drifted away and life took them away from home, I found myself alone.  Being unable to work, and having no social life to break up the monotony, time stopped having much meaning. What I do remember is that about every six months I'd feel a little worse.  The pain that had once lived in my legs and faded into the background, slowly took over.  It started showing up in my upper arms, my back, my face...  Until everything hurt me.  Sitting in a chair.  Standing.  On a bad day, even breathing hurts me.

At some point during this invasion, I decided I had enough and started going to doctors.  I had so much blood drawn I could have fed the entire earth's mosquito population.  They found nothing, so my GP stuck a "Depression" Post-It to my forehead and wouldn't consider anything else.  Even though I had all the signs of Fibromyalgia, he wouldn't get off the depression train.  Probably because he mangled the tender points exam that was standard operating procedure back then.  I hate my GP, but I concede that it's hard to tell the difference between pain caused by depression, and a depression caused by pain. Lemme take a second to explain the tender points.  These are spots on the body, usually in the major muscles, that are incredibly sensitive to touch.  So much so that tapping one lightly with a finger causes pain.  They also tend to radiate pain outwards when set off.  While these are no longer used as a diagnostic tool, most people with Fibro have them.  Or so I've heard.

Eventually I made my way down the list of doctors to a rheumatologist who diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia, but with a much higher pain level than is usually seen with it.  I still don't know if that means I have something other than Fibro, or if my body is just more broken than most.  He prescribed me LESS tylenol than I was ALREADY TAKING EVERY DAY for headaches to deal with the pain.  So I have mixed feelings about him.

Headaches, one of the many other symptoms that springs up with Fibro to make life miserable.  But they really aren't important, as this portion of the story is supposed to be about pain.

So that's where I was for a while.  Diagnosed with something they can do nothing about, prescribed less medicine than I was already taking, and pain that kept getting worse every six months.

Pain does funny things to the mind.  You start out thinking, "Why me?" but when you're in pain long enough, you end up thinking, "I must deserve this." 

"Surely a good person wouldn't be punished like this.  I must be a bad person." 

"I must have done something horrible in a previous life." 

You start to think you're bad, or would be bad if it weren't for the pain stopping you.  "If I wasn't crippled with pain, I'd be doing something terrible.  That's why this is happening to me."  Maybe you even start doing bad things, to match up with the image in your mind.

And these are the least dangerous thoughts.

I can't count how many times I've thought about suicide.  Honestly, it crosses my mind at least once every single day.  And when the pain gets to the point where you'd rather be unconscious because you're whimpering the entire time you're awake, killing yourself really doesn't sound like a bad thing.

I was at that point when I met my Neurologists.  They provided me with medicine for the headaches and the pain.  I wish I could say that that fixed everything, but medicine only does so much.  My pain is not gone, it's just not at the suicide level any more.

There is a little more to the story, but I think I've covered everything important.  I could talk about unfriendly support groups, the friend that changed my life, or the family that makes things worse, but none of it makes any difference. This is my life.  A one-two combo of pain and fatigue that knocks me out every time.  An unpleasant existence at best, and the reason for my desperate need to find something or someone beautiful to hold onto.

[theoutletonmychest]

My Lonely Life (The Talk), Part I

Before I get around to posting my silly little high school crushes, I'll need to say a little bit about myself and my situation.

In hindsight, it started when I was very little.  I remember I was having trouble sleeping at night.  Why?  Because it felt like a dagger carved out of ice was stabbing into my legs.  I told my parents, and they told me it was just growing pains and it would go away.

It didn't.  Over time, I got used to it and stopped noticing except for the odd day when it would be more intense.

The pain wasn't the only symptom to be explained away and ignored.  I was weak.  The kind of weak that marks a kid as a target for life.  I was fairly athletic until about second grade, when I noticed I was falling behind.  Running was harder than it used to be, and I was getting slower.  I guess I thought it was because I was a nerd.  I was smart and spent a lot of time reading.  And nerds can't be good at anything sports-related, right?  Like I said, hindsight.

It didn't matter how much I did.  I never got any stronger.  My body never became accustomed to the activities.  Years passed by, and my time "running" the mile kept rising.  I never gave it much thought.  This lasted until High School, when I stopped taking PhysEd.  But it wasn't the last I'd see of this pattern.

I noticed the fatigue before the pain.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Teenagers sleep long hours, right?  Another symptom was ignored until everything collided and blew a hole in what used to be my life. 

Junior year I started having troubles with anxiety attacks.  I wasn't sure why.  I'm still not sure why.  The only explanation I have that makes any sense is that subconsciously I knew something was wrong.  I'd go to school, come home exhausted at 3:30 PM, and go to bed.  I'd wake up two seconds later at 10:00 AM to an angry phone call from my mother, asking why I wasn't at school.  I didn't know why this was happening, or what was causing it.  But my subconscious put two and two together.  Go to school, hurt body.  Its brilliantly calculated response was to bring on anxiety attacks whenever I left the house, overwhelming my already complicated life.

Junior year ended, Senior year started, and still there was no change.  Well, that's not entirely true.  My fatigue continued to increase.  I missed more school my Senior year than I had the previous twelve years combined.  I was forced to drop out and try some alternative education plans.

Dropping out helped, as I was doing less, but I still hadn't figured out what was wrong.  All I knew was that I was tired all the time, and that little things like brushing my hair and teeth made my arms feel like I'd been lifting crates of bricks for hours.  Oh, and that if I walked on the sidewalk to school I was going to be run over by a car... or a power pole would fall on me and kill me.  Thanks for the help, brain.

I was walking to a Contract Learning program at the school for troubled students.  Basically I had to agree to study 20 hours a week.  Five in the classroom, the rest on my own.  One problem.  They assigned things one unit at a time, which I got through in about forty-five minutes.  Despite acing every test I was given in record time, I was eventually asked to leave the program.

After being kicked out of Criminal High, I started sleeping less.  I think it was around then that my conscious mind put two and two together.  Go out, hurt body.  Side note: We found a school-by-mail thing and I did end up with a proper diploma.  No square hat, though.

I still had some friends at this point in my life, and they're what helped me understand my situation the most.  Not by any advice or explanation they offered, but by simply including me.  I was sleeping, on average, ten hours a night.  Then, I'd go hang out with my friends for the day, and then I'd sleep for eighteen hours.  I tested it out a few times, and found just how limited my new life was.

The worst my fatigue ever got?  That was a terrifying experience.  I had been pushing myself to get out with my friends for three days in a row.  That was my limit.  After three adrenaline-fueled days out, I went to sleep.  For 22 hours.  I woke up, ate and drank something, then went back to sleep... for another 22 hours.  After a week, I was sleeping just 20 hours at a time.  After three weeks I was back to sleeping 10-12 hours a night.  And as scary as it is going to sleep, waking up a second later and finding a day has passed, there is something worse.  Half the nights I was comatose I could feel time pass as I slept.  It was like I was lying there in my bed with my eyes closed, except I wasn't actually conscious.  There was no sound, no light, no thought, just drifting through darkness for what felt like days.  Terrifying.

After that, I went out of my way to minimalize my fatigue.  I learned to manage it, but my nightmare was not under control.  The pain I had felt as a child had grown up without me noticing and was more than ready to test itself against my ever-waning strength.