#it's not his FAULT that he doesn't understand because he has never experienced chronic pain; and i'm not blaming him for that!!

[itstheelvenjedi]

Things I wish able-bodied people/people who don’t have chronic pain would stop asking me:

“Are you sore today?” or any variation thereof. Yes. Motherfucker the answer is YES. I am sore. I am ALWAYS SORE that’s why it’s called CHRONIC pain!

It does not go away! It never goes away! I have just had my pain become such a huge part of my daily life that I developed a tolerance for it!! So that on “good” days when the meds take enough of the edge of that I can ignore it, I can move and get stuff done! But please I am BEGGING you stop assuming that me being more physically active or getting more stuff done on a good day is me “not being in pain” because it’s not!! I just feel okay about pretending the pain doesn’t exist today! But it’s still there, it’s always fucking there and it always fucking hurts and it will NEVER stop hurting! I have been in pain since I was a teenager, 24/7, and it hasn’t fucking stopped (for reference/those that don’t regularly follow me, I am closer to 30 than 20 now lol). My pain has been a part of me so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to be a person who WASN’T in constant agony but I still go to sleep dreaming of the blissful ignorance I had as a child before the chronic pain took me the fuck out when I hit puberty (and tbh...I probably still had the pain then, I just didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal and not every child has those problems)

The difference between a good day and a bad day for me ISN’T anything to do with “not being in pain” it’s everything to do with “how well can I IGNORE the pain today?”

Because on a bad day the answer is “no”. I can’t ignore it, any of it. Stuff that I could do last week on a good day, like showering or eating food or goddamn it even getting out of bed (in case anyone is wondering where I disappear to, those are bad days and yes. I cannot leave my bed. It is that bad) are impossible. Because you might as well put a plastic spoon in my hand and tell me to use only that plastic spoon to help me scale to the top of Mt Everest. That is the level of physical, mental and emotional struggle that fighting my pain is like every day. On good days, I have proper climbing equipment and I can make it. But on bad days I have a plastic spoon, and the plastic spoon will NEVER be climbing equipment no matter how much I wish it would.

And I think a lot of people who have never experienced chronic pain don’t realise this.