For all the days where I feel like I’m coping, when I am able to lift my head off the pillow despite it feeling as heavy as a bag of concrete, when I’m able to hide the tiredness in my eyes with a careful appliance of concealer and mascara, when I’m able to sit and pretend I’m not going through pure torture just so I can be out having a nice time, when I actually get shit done; For all of those days there is always one of these days.
One of ‘these’ days when I feel like screaming but I’m too fucking exhausted. When I don’t know how to respond to the question “How are you?” because I’m tired of telling people the shitty truth. When I know I’ve done far too much despite not having done anywhere near as close to the amount of things I used to be able to do. When I’m angry because I’m starting to forget what normal feels like. When the physical pain of my chronic illness is too much to bare but I have nowhere to turn to as no painkillers will touch it and getting blind drunk just isn’t the answer.
I feel like I’m old as fuck already. I’m 27 and have to accept that I’ll most likely need to nap if I want to do anything that requires standing up past 6pm and I can’t even walk a mile these days without wanting to lie on the ground halfway and fall asleep.
The things I used to live for seem too difficult to do now. Even picking up my camera is effort at the moment and photography has been my entire life.
My body hurts like hell.
The pain is paralysing. Sometimes I feel like the bones in my hips are being crushed while a hot spiky poker is stabbing the inside of my stomach. Sometimes it’s a dull crushing ache that stops my legs from working. Sometimes it feels like something is pulling my insides out. It doesn’t have a trigger. It doesn’t only happen at certain times. It’s always there. Sometimes it gets much, much worse but for no reason at all.
And then there is the emotional pain… The anxiety of feeling like a let down or even a burden to the people I love because I have to keep cancelling plans or because I’m irritable and tired all the time or because I need to be looked after. The sadness of never knowing if I’ll be able to have children or whether I’ll ever feel any better than this. The uselessness I feel because my work has suffered and because I’ve had to cut down the hours I put into my job. Having to set myself new limits because my body is just not as capable as I want it to be and I can’t control it.
It sucks dicks. But tomorrow I’ll wake up and I’ll haul my body out of bed and carry on because that is life.
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