Dealing with Pain.

I am overwhelmed.

Maybe you are feeling in a similar way?

Life has always been somewhat “too much” for me, too much good, too much bad, and the moments it wasn’t, I, myself, would somehow become too much for me. You know what I’m talking about?

I started to feel not well in my body in my early teens. All kinds of pains. Migraines and stomach aches, pain in my chest, my joints. My immune system was down so I used to get stuck with every flu, any cold too.

My teenage years could have been more easy…I lost friends to accidents, disease, and suicide and by the time I was 18 I had somehow through therapy started to believe my own physical pains were caused by emotional traumas. As a queer kid I had been looked at as oversensitive most of the time. I accepted peoples ideas of me, unfortunately moldeable.

I was always weak, tired. It felt normal I had to work harder than others to reach similar goals. For periods I would faint almost daily, have nosebleeds. I developed all kinds of allergies, asthma. I was depressed, but did not know what depression was. I thought I was actually crazy, unfixable. I was so disassociated from life. I started to partake in very risktaking behavior looking for some sense of control in my life, but instead it all spiraled out of control more. These things can happen at young age too. I felt somehow I was punishment to my family, I watched my parents pour their finances and time into my health.

I can’t deny the luck I have had, to find myself where I am today as a 31 year old human.

But today, I can’t deny all the pain I have experienced neither. I remember thinking as a 19 year old “ how can people live with all this pain, how can they do it, why can’t I do it too”. I spent years in therapy, dealing with my hurting heart, mind, body. By the time I was 21 I had somehow come to accept that I felt pain the way I felt it, I was just really sensitive… “always had been”

I imagined to one day to build a greenhouse in which I could live, like a bubble, humid air that’s easy to breath, live this healing life with my boyfriend. A life that’s comfortable. So we got a jobs and worked hard. To achieve dreams.

Total bummer I kept on getting sick, worse and worse each time. I would feel so much shame around my incapacity to function as other humans around me. The costs of illness scared me, and I feared one day I couldn’t live an independent life. I started to hide my problems, physical and mental.

When I was 24, for a while I was coughing blood without anyone knowing about it, but eventually a friend asked me why I spend so much time coughing in the bathroom every morning. I had normalized it as cleaning out the collected blood in my lungs from laying horizontally all night. She told me I should go to the hospital.

In the hospital a growth was discovered in my chest, in the lower left lung lobe. A growth bigger than my heart, putting pressure on things around it. Blocking veins and nerves. Specialists were amazed at how “well” the growth had nestled itself within my lung, how it had gotten so big without causing critical damage. They said I was lucky and unlucky. It was explained to me as a cell without function. It just grew in me, without a purpose, just trying to exists. One specialist gave me I the option to leave it in there, and monitor closely how it behaves. There was a possibility the growth had stopped growing. I had lived with it for 24 years, so the doctor’s proposition to wait one more month before cutting open my body to remove the growth, seemed reasonable.

For one month I did everything I could imagine to somehow shrink the growth. You name it, I tried it. I also met with two other lungspecialist who urged me to get the growth removed as soon as possible. I had stopped couching blood, but antibiotics were struggling to control the infection I had in my lung due to the growth.

In that one month I realized what was happening to me. I was actually sick. My allergies, my pains, my depression, suddenly I felt like I understood what was happening to me. Weekly check ups showed the growth was still expanding. So it was removed, together with the lobe of lung in which it lived.

So there I was, 25 years old, and I felt so ready for life. For the first time in a very long time I felt good. Just like normal, good. My allergies all went away, my migraines stopped, I could breathe and for a year I didn’t even get sick once. I made it fun, to recover, but without the support of the people around me, I wouldn’t have managed to get back into shape.

When I look back, I don’t remember the doctor telling me about all the side effect from a lungsurgery. I believed I would get back to at least the way things were, but that was not true. I just got other problems. Time and finance consuming problems. If I would not have done the surgery, I wouldn’t have had the chance to live the life I am living now.

I really learned to be thankful for life over time, already as a teenager, to be thankful for moments without pain, but still today I keep learning about how to deal with any sort of pain.

It has shaped my life, the way I have dealt with my suffering has changed my life. I have changed my life in order to deal with pain. In some moments I am so thankful for that, but in others moments I just wish to be pain-free. Disease-free. A life that doesn’t seem to revolve about illness or pain management.

Untill recently I felt shame about my suffering, mental or physical. I felt shame about becoming sick or being injured. Minimizing my pain in the past, has often helped me to push through the pain. Knowing things can get worse, means I m not in such a bad position. But the past months I have come to realize the impact of all the pain.

I am curious about suffering, the end of suffering, life, death. Each time I think have learned a lesson, I am challenged by something bigger that I don’t understand yet… It’s hard to admit to myself, but I am out of energy. The tricks I used in the past to help me move foreward, they don’t seem to work anymore and I have become fearful of physical pain to such a point it’s causing me mental pain. When pain arises, tho be it from current infections or old injuries, I am knocked out instantly. I am out of patience for pain. I am ready to give up everything. I lose hope it will ever be better again.

I have been down this road manier times, I know it goes nowhere I need to go. So I just let go. I trust things will be alright, and that life is worth being lived even if it is painful.

I know how often I have been surprised about how good things can become really fast. I know to not hold on to my current experience. Things change, all things pass.

There is no twist in the end to make sense of what I am writing here, if anyone is ever reading this, wauw thanks for making it all the way down here?;)

But… seems there is more I’d like to write…

If you are in any pain, please know you are not alone. Suffering is so personal and it can be extremely isolating. Don‘t minimize your pain, don’t internalize your voice. Talk to someone if you can, let yourself be supported as much as you support others, or more. Treat yourself with whatever kindness you have space for. Don’t feel guilty for suffering.Meet yourself, and let yourself know everything will be alright.

The only way I can imagine a world without suffering, is one in which we stop attaching ourselves to life so strongly.( but that’s a whole other story ) As a person with compromised health I often feel looked down upon. I hear people say things about others like; “ ow such bad luck now after the mother, the father got cancer too “.

It upsets my stomach when people feel empowered because they have good health. They feel better than others, lucky, or even as if they have made better decisions than others, just because they aren’t sick. As if they value their own life more just because of random circumstances they happen to find themselves in. I have tried to speak up in the past, about my experience of meeting so many different sick people over the years, about how wonderful humans they are or were. I would say things like “ the quality of life isn’t measured in health or years”. ( my shorter painful life is as valid as your long pain-free life ) But in general, if you haven’t suffered or known someone who has suffered, you probably wouldn’t know what I am talking about. People can be so ignorant, but I know I am human too… we know what we know, and that is what we know :)

Now as I get older, soon 32, I recognize the quality of my life depends on the quality of healthcare I can afford. I can try to be as optimistic as possible about everything, and just go with the punches.

This last punch knocked me out for three months so far and I have no idea where to go from here.

But I know it’s simple, I must go on. There is no other way. Receive what life is giving me and do something with it. Keep going. We never know what tomorrow might bring.

I usually don’t write anything like this, why would I if I already have to live it, but maybe anyone can find some support in this as I keep finding support in reading about other people their experiences too. I have been living in a remote area for some years now, and through reading on Vocal I feel I can connect to others to inspire , or motivate me, to feel understood sometimes through reading is a most wonderful experience.

Mountains of best of luck to all of us

Oceans Of love

Take care