I FEEL BAD FOR LADY GAGA

When someone famous
is diagnosed with Fibromyalgia
we jump on it.
Why?

If someone famous has it we will be able to validate our own problems with Fibromyalgia. Most people think this is a garbage can diagnosis so if someone like Lady Gaga has to cancel tour dates due to the pain people will have the light bulb moment and think to themselves, "maybe they aren't crazy." 

Me?

I just feel bad that she has to go through this.

We're still smiling through the tears. When people ask how we are we still say, "fine." We still get irritated at the Lyrica commercial and we still are disbelieved by doctors. We hesitate to talk about the tons of symptoms that pick and choose which day they will decide to appear. 

We even doubt ourselves and each other at times.

No matter what I still hate feeling out of control in my own skin. I hate waking up in pain and I hate to go to bed in pain. What I hate even more is appearing weak. I hate the fact that I have to say that I have Fibromyalgia. When people ask what it is, I hate telling them. I hate having to explain what the pain has done to my life.

We now have limitations and before there were none. We now look at life in a totally different way. Even when the pain levels subside there is a place within us that knows it's only a matter of time before it will rear its ugly head again. The pain and fatigue makes you retreat and the feeling of uselessness comes over you like a wave crashing on the shore.

Can we ever be the same again?
Yes and no.

I am back at a place where the pain is strong and intense. It threatened to place me back in the black hole; a place I don't ever want to be again. I escaped the dark but it was close.

What was different this time?

Right now I'm in a place that I haven't been in many years. I'm feeling strong; definitely not physically strong but mentally strong. I'm feeling a strength of purpose and it keeps me from going down in depression. I'm walking every day and it's helped more than I can say. It takes oxycodone to do it but whatever it takes is what I'll do. I wake up in the morning in pain...that hasn't changed but I have realized that the pain isn't going to go away so I need something to overcome it. 

Let me make this clear. 

I don't believe that the walking will overcome the pain but what it does is overcome what the pain can do to me.

I'm not going to stand on a soapbox and say this is the avenue for everyone. What I will say is that there's a place in all of us where we can go and be strong. I know this because we have the strength to endure the kind of pain that we do on a daily basis. We all have a very high pain threshold and people don't understand that.

But we do.

So what I'll say is that I pray for all of us to look deep inside and find that place where pain cannot touch us.

It's there.

I know it.