fibromyalgia in Thoughts.

The hardest part of having fibromyalgia is not the chronic physical pain. It took me ten years to figure this out. (What can I say? I can be a little bit slow.)

The hardest part is the feeling alone. It’s when you try to convince yourself that what so many people say is true. When you try to force yourself to believe that you are normal and can be like everyone else. That maybe the doctors were wrong when they diagnosed you, because sometimes you feel normal.

The hardest part is accepting that everything you feel is real. From the pain to the depression. From the “fibro fog” to the anxiety. From the sleep issues that cause you to feel overly fatigued to all of the other symptoms. It is all real.

When I was 17-18, I hit my lowest point with this disease. The doctors had me on medications to “help” my senior year of high school. My pain was horrible. I could barely get myself out of bed in the mornings. My depression worsened as I became more and more isolated. I missed so much school I was going to be expelled. The medications that were supposed to help, made me worse. I had headaches for weeks. I was literally the sickest I have ever been in my entire life. At one point I ended up in the emergency room for the pain. There was nothing they could do. There was nothing anyone could do. My world fell apart at my feet and I broke.

I dropped out of high school and got my GED. I felt like a failure for doing this. Not that I think there is anything wrong with getting a GED, but just that my life headed down a different direction that I had intended. And things kept falling apart. I became more isolated in my life. I stopped taking the medications. I stopped believing that everything was real. Because if I really had these issues, why did the medications make me so much worse?

I haven’t seen a doctor in over 7 years, except to have some x-rays after a car accident. I haven’t taken any medicines. I haven’t taken charge of what my fibromyalgia does to me. I let it decide the fullness of my life. I let it set my limits. (Though I also did at times push those limits out of pure stubbornness. I refused to believe that I wasn’t capable of being more. Of doing what everyone else was capable of doing.)

I’ve avoided acceptance for 10 years. But accepting you have a problem is the first step to finding your solution right? So here I am. Accepting that my issues are real. This invisible disease has held too much power over my head for too long. It’s time for me to start breaking free.