ALTERED STATES

Slightly skewed.

Maybe to the right a little bit.

It seems I live

in an altered state.

The one thing chronic pain tends to do is make you a little introspective. It gives you something else to think about besides your pain. 

Well, not really, we just trade thinking about one kind of pain for another. 

I thought my chronic pain would give me a chance to deal with issues and some of the baggage that I've carried around for years. I've even written that I've possessed some sort of clarity of thought in these times. I wanted to write through the depression and maybe, just maybe,  work out and figure out why I do what I do. 

What I didn't realize is that chronic pain doesn't give you a true clarity of vision. It skews your reality toward your pain. I'm not saying that you can't work out issues and problems but, for me, I had an awakening that showed me something a little bit different.

If you ever think you know yourself, just ask your friends to describe you. I tried a game from a post where you describe yourself using 25 adjectives. As I looked at the task last night, I was in a great deal of pain and it seemed almost overwhelming. Even though I wrote what I was feeling at the time, I was surprised when I got comments adding adjectives that seemed upbeat and spirited; totally unlike the dejection I felt when I wrote my list.

As I looked at it today, with the pain lessened to a manageable level, I would have written something a little bit different. Make no mistake; I'm still a cynic and I have a love of sarcasm but the list looked so down. Some of those things wouldn't change but I think I would have written more about a sense of fairness and justice. I would have written about my compassion for strays. I wouldn't have written so much about depression and fear. Those things are still there but today they're not as prevalent as they were yesterday.

I think we all go through the dark and I also don't think that's going to change for me anytime soon. Once pain became a part of my daily life, it stole a part of me. I just don't want it to keep stealing bits and pieces because one day that means it wins. I don't want it to win. There is too much that is light and good to let the pain keep me in a corner in the dark. 


I'm certain that my Type A status and perfection issues are not going to disappear. I'm just as certain that when the pain spikes I'll wear the melancholia cloak like it was tailored just for me. Fibromyalgia puts you on the roller coaster and doesn't let you off. That's just the way it is but thank heaven for the days where you can put things back into perspective.

I also realized, from the comments left for me, that I'm not the empty shell that I sometimes feel like but that there still are some of my finer qualities hidden underneath all that pain and fatigue. Sometimes it's just hard to find it and sometimes I don't want to find it. It's easier to pull the emotional cover over my head and let the pain take over.

That's why it's good to get a reality check from your friends. They keep us grounded and bring us up when we're down. That has been one of the greatest blessings of this blog; the friends that I've met.

Of course, sometimes we join each other down on the floor and just cry, whine, bitch and moan together.

That feels good too.

Isn't it supposed to??