SavageTimes

for my daughter, the bravest person I know, and for JP, also braver than me, who told me to

This is the reality of chronic pain: you are in pain all the time, all day long, to the point where sometimes you aren’t even sure if you are still in pain.  The pain has become part of you, like a limb, if that limb had its own agenda and didn’t pay any attention to your brain’s attempts to control it. You want so badly to NOT be in pain, you are willing to pretend you aren’t.  You are willing to paste a smile on your face and talk to your friends and when they ask, “How are you,” you say, “Fine,” without a moment’s thought.  Because you WANT to be fine. You want to be OK. You want to be “normal” and just go about your days laughing at stupid memes and worrying about homework and having the worst part of your day, the absolute worst part, be that you think someone was judging you. Because in your journey along this path of all the time every where pain, you have met people who absolutely judge you.  Who make no attempt to hide the fact that they think you are faking your issues. That your issues aren’t really what you say they are but something else. They see you crumpled up in a desk at school and ask you how you are and you say fine because of course you are going to say fine; you are fifteen; and you want to BE fine; and you are tired of saying you are not fine; so of course, you say you are fine, but inside, not even deep inside anymore, you wish someone would look past your pasted on smile and your attempts to be “fine” and just give you an ounce of solace. Just a hand on your arm to let you know they may not understand, they may not know what to do, but they know you are not fine. Just someone who will sit next to you, not to say anything at all or try to “fix” you because no one has that magic, but just to not AVOID you.  Just to not stare at you across the classroom and then look away when you meet their eyes and turn to someone else and start joking around and laughing.  Oh, God, how you want someone to turn to you so the two of you can laugh. And not turn away.  Not whisper about you in the halls.  Do they think you don’t hear it?  Do they think the rumors and the gossip don’t get back to you?  The reality of chronic pain is you need so much, but want so little.  And the world—YOUR world, the people you’ve only known for a year or a month or the people you’ve known since kindergarten, the people who should KNOW you, KNOW if you are letting them see your face in pain, it’s no joke, because you were the one who flew off a horse at ten and kept going, you were the one who broke her thumb in flag football but still took your opponent down and dealt with the pain later, that world, who should KNOW you—that world can’t or won’t or doesn’t see that you need so much but want so little.  That world thinks it’s the other way around.

And the reality of chronic pain is that…you want so very much to be out there, in that world, despite the fact that you now know all the people in that world are cowards. The reality of chronic pain is you would do almost anything to be a coward with them.

Except be in pain.