#and the normal amount of pain is none

[lostinthefrigginwoods]

I've adapted a new way of dealing with pain: just. Crying. Expressing the pain. Taking a break and resting. It's been doing wonders. Nothing is more important than taking care of my body and mind.

[annoyedlord]

WE FINALLY HAVE AN IDEA OF WHY IM IN SO MUCH PAIN AND MY GP GAVE ME A LETTER SO I CAN SEE A CENTER WHO'LL HELP ME AND ALSO A FRIEND GAVE ME A CANE TO HELP ME TO WALK WHEN I STRUGGLE TOO MUCH IT WAS A GOOD WEEK!!!!

[jayzelnut]

Venting a little today.

[dramarants]

don’t even look at me if you wouldn’t consider sealing yourself in an ice coffin with me to stay by my side should I suffer an untimely death 😩

[achilleslyre]

i don’t really know where to rant to so just excuse me for a minute. my current health update is they still have no idea what’s wrong with me and have no specialists in my city they can refer me too meaning if i tried to find a specialist i’d likely have to go out to toronto meaning i’d have to pay just under $100 to take the train there however many time they need me to. my pains been getting worse and my fatigue is getting so much worse. i’ve been considering looking into getting a walker for the really bad days to help with my shakiness or so i have a place to sit. i’m so embarrassed i don’t want to though. most days any little thing can be a struggle and is taxing. i feel trapped in my own body and i don’t know what to do. but i feel i just complain too much. i know what’s going on isn’t normal but i’m worried i’m psyching myself out and making it out to be worse than it is. i just want to stop being exhausted all the time and i just want to stop being in pain all the time.

[cozybi]

🫶

[tmae3114]

I keep catching myself thinking "oh, I'm kinda making a fuss out of nothing, aren't I, it's not even that bad, it's like a stubbed toe at worst, what am I even worrying about, I'm being a wuss" and every time I do, I have to mentally take myself by the shoulders and remind myself that regardless of the severity of the pain, the simple fact that I am getting period cramps while not on my period is a BAD, CONCERNING THING, WHICH SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING

[mejomonster]

Truly genuinely beyond happy my feelings of hunger are back and normal and regularly occurring again after the hellscape that was the past year

[crimzoncrow]

on todays episode of am i overreacting or did my doctor underreact: my knees hate me and so do my ankles (and a variety of other joints)

[steampoweredskeleton]

.

Ignore

[reptile-garden]

I’m really fucking annoyed with Drs. I’ve been having abdominal pain since fucking August. All the test are negative. Blood work shows nothing, Ultrasound and Ct are normal besides two slightly inflamed lymph nodes in my abdomen.

Dr sent me to the surgeon, surgeon was like “well I can’t remove those lymph nodes with out major surgery, and I don’t think you need that, but I think it’s either celiacs, fibromyalgia(since fibro can start with pelvic pai ), or  endometriosis, go back and talk with your OBGYN and PC.”

So I did, OBGYN is like “naw not endometriosis. Here’s a referral to pelvic pain and PT.”

Got tested for celiacs and surprise surprise it’s negative. I had already done a diet trial long ago to rule out things. They want me to redo a h.pylori test but I can promise you that’s negative too

PC said “Oh no it’s not Fibro, fibro doesn’t cuss abdominal pain, only joint pain. If you’re having that’s schedule an exam”

Bitch in my previous emails. Back when I asked for an ANA I listed my symptoms, and chronic pain in my joints that comes and goes was one of them. Thankfully that was negative too

My knees will sometimes hurt so bad I can’t sleep, sometimes it’s both sometimes it’s one. It comes and goes, heat and a weighted blanket help. It’s also the same with my ankles. Same with my right arm, both the wrist and elbow, but I always assumed that was from the surgery I had. My left arm often aches as a whole and the joints in my wrist and elbow recently started to ache on and off. Both my hips will randomly ache and also cause me to not be able to sleep on what ever one is aching. My lower back also randomly decides to ache and make it hard to do my job. Heat and compression or a weighted blanket is the only thing that helps at all.

My lungs randomly decide some days they want to hurt when I breath (always assumed this was long term covid issues). My stomach decides randomly with out rhyme or reason that it’s going to cause me to want to puke for no reason, it’s not the reflux that the GERD causes it’s straight up nausea.

There’s also the chronic fatigue I’ve been fighting for almost a year now, a new nicer bed helped some.

I’ve been told “oh it’s chronic pain, sorry we can’t help.”

I got in with the specialist for pelvic pain in fucking January, no OTC pain killers do anything besides take the edge off and then sometimes hurt my stomach, so I really don’t take those, they tried offering narcotics but I quickly shot that down as post surgery I got Vicodin, was supposed to take 1 tablet like 2-3 times a day, can’t remember exactly how often, but I took a 1/2 tab once and reacted so badly I would rather be in pain than deal with that shit again. Meloxicam/Metacam makes me wanna puke, gabapentin gives me vertigo. So I’ve been treating with heat and every now and then taking  acetaminophen.

So tell me once again, how nothing is wrong with me since all my test are negative.

Honestly I think I’ll just wait for the specialist apt at the end of January instead of dealing with Drs who tell you your symptoms match then tell you no your symptoms don’t match. I had one normal Dr tell me it could be fibro while my dr was on vacation, but it would be better to talk with the dr who specializes in the pelvic pain. Only to have my dr when she was back from vacation to say no it’s not

[1327-1]

my hard launch to get medicated immediately thwarted by healthcare professional who believes i am there to inconvenience them

[softcuddledrone]

i need a mechanic to methodically dismantle me piece by piece, clean up the good parts, repair or replace the damaged ones, and lovingly put me back together running cleaner and better like a restoration passion project

[urbanfiltered]

❤️

[iwanthermidnightz]

When I was 24 I sat in a backstage dressing room in London, buzzing with anticipation. My backup singers and bandmates gathered around me in a scattered circle.Scissors emerged and I watched in the mirror as my locks of long curly hair fell in piles on the floor. There I was in my plaid button down shirt, grinning sheepishly as my tour mates and friends cheered on my haircut. This simple thing that everyone does. But I had a secret. For me. It was more than a change of hairstyle. When I was 24. I decided to completely reinvent myself.

How does a person reinvent herself, you ask? In any way I could think of. Musically, geographically, aesthetically, behaviorally, motivationally. And I did so joyfully. The curiosity I had felt the first murmurs of while making red had amplified into a pulsing heartbeat of restlessness in my bars. The risks I took when I toyed with pop sounds and sensibilities on red? I wanted to push it further. The sense of freedom I felt when traveling to big bustling cities? I wanted to live in one. The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them.

You see, in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming, the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.

It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.

Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix this if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth. And my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn't sensationalize or sexualize that, right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.

But none of that mattered then because I had a plan and I had a demeanor as trusting as a basket of golden retriever puppies. I had the keys to my own apartment in New York and I had new melodies bursting from my imagination. I had Max Martin and Shellback who were happy to help me explore this new sonic landscape I was enamored with. I had a new friend named Jack Antonoff who had made some cool tracks in his apartment. I had the idea that the album would be called 1989. And we would reference big 80's synths and write sky high choruses. I had sublime, inexplicable faith and I ran right toward it, in high heels and a crop top.

There was so much that I didn't know then, and looking back I see what a good thing that was. This time of my life was marked by right kind of naïveté, a hunger for adventure. And a sense of freedom I hadn't tasted before. It turns out that the cocktail of naïveté, hunger for adventure and freedom can lead to some nasty hangovers, metaphorically speaking. Of course everyone had something to say. But they always will. I learned lessons, paid prices, and tried to… don't say it don't say it. I'm sorry, I have to say it. Shake it off.

I’ll always be so incredibly grateful for how you loved and embraced this album. You, who followed my zig zag creative choices and cheered on my risks and experiments. You, who heard the wink and humor in "blank space" and maybe even empathized with the pain behind the satire. You, who saw the seeds of allyship and advocating for equality in "Welcome to New York". You, who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult). You, who saw that I reinvent myself for a million reasons, and that one of them is to try my very best to entertain you. You, who have had the grace to allow me the freedom to change.

I was born in 1989. Reinvented for the first time in 2014, and a part of me was reclaimed in 2023 with the re-release of this album I love so dearly.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long. This moment is a reflection of the woods we've wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark.

I present to you, with gratitude and wild wonder, my version of 1989.

It’s been waiting for you.

[audhdnight]

Just thinking about the common experience of late diagnosed disabled people of “the normal amount of pain is none” and how we’re just supposed to know that despite *some* level of pain being OUR normal for our entire lives, even if it’s usually not super bad it’s just always there.

Thinking about how, when I told my mother this, she asked me “So what’s hurt?” Which is very different than “what hurts?”

I looked at her, confused. “Nothing is hurt. I just hurt.”

And she says “But where do you hurt?”

“Well, right now it’s my stomach and my ankles-“

She cuts me off. “So you twisted your ankle?”

“No,” I say. “My ankles just hurt. I’ve been walking today.”

Now it’s her turn to look confused. “Just walking doesn’t make your ankles hurt. You must have sprained them or something.”

But I shake my head. “Nope. This just happens on days when I walk more than a little bit. My ankles hurt first, then my knees by lunch time. And if I don’t take a nap and stay on my feet all day, my hips will be hurting too.”

“Oh.”

Joint pain is my normal. Sometimes, if I barely walk all day, the ache in my ankles is barely noticeable and doesn’t affect my functioning because I’m used to it. If I do what most able-bodied people would consider to be a “normal” amount of walking, almost all of my joints will hurt by supper. If I have to wash dishes or run any errands, I’ll hurt so bad I can’t walk for the rest of the day.

Then there’s the chronic migraine attacks. I used to have them multiple times a week as a child, and no matter how I explained myself, nobody ever understood that they weren’t just headaches. I experienced those too, and frequently, but they were not the same. Thankfully, at the age of eleven, I found an article explaining migraine triggers. I was able to identify a few of my own triggers, and the frequency of my migraine attacks reduced to maybe a couple a month. For a few years I was basically on cloud nine, I’d never experienced such a lack of pain before and it was so freeing. Unfortunately, migraine is a progressive condition, so the attacks have gotten more frequent over the years.

And then there’s the “random” pains. Some mornings I wake up and my stomach hurts. Or my chest. Or my back. These are just things I have to live with, because my body’s connective tissue is… well, for lack of a better word, faulty. And I never knew that other people didn’t experience this, because how could I? We never talked about it. Sometimes I’d hear people complain about back aches and just assume they were like mine. Of course, I knew that injuring yourself could cause muscle aches, obviously. But I just assumed that *most* of the time, other peoples bodies hurt like mine did. I didn’t realize that humans aren’t supposed to “just hurt” without a connected incident.

And when I try to explain this to able bodied people, their response is always the same. “Well, everyone’s back hurts sometimes.” “Everybody gets headaches sometimes.” “You’re not special just because you’re too lazy to walk. I still go to work when I don’t feel good.” And no matter how many times I try to say that No, you don’t get it, I *always* hurt, they still brush me off and dismiss me.