Sometimes you just have to cry alone in your car...

I’m not gonna lie, y’all, I cried in the car just a little bit ago. I had a moment. I’m having a moment, I suppose. Let me tell you about it. As I’ve mentioned many times in my previous posts, I suffer from chronic pain. Most specifically, I deal with chronic muscle tightness, spasms, and structural misalignment in my low back, hips, and pelvis. At its best, it’s a dull pulse of pain that comes and goes. At its worst, it feels like people have grabbed onto each of my hips and are ripping me in half by pulling them apart while a third person is dragging a knife up and down my spine and around to my chest. When it’s dull, I can sometimes almost forget it’s there. When it’s flared up, I can barely think straight, my stomach is in knots, and my energy is gone. When it’s dull, my body feels like it’s running well, like everything is in order. When it’s flared up, I can’t sleep through the night, I shit 7+ times a day, and I feel like I’d rather cut off my own testicles than deal with the pain that radiates into my groin.

Too much information? I don’t care. It’s the reality of this situation for me. Now, I’m no stranger to pain. I’ve broken bones, torn muscles and ligaments, taken hits from people twice my size, gotten 9 tattoos. I’ve been stuck with needles of every size, I’ve had ribs cut out of my body, I’ve had multiple surgeries. I am no stranger to pain. What I was never prepared for, though, was pain that lasts. Pain that sometimes just doesn’t fucking quit, pain that I can’t be certain will ever quit. For example, I have been in a flare up for 4 straight days now. My baseline has moved from a dull pulse to a constant radiation and my the highest intensity has moved from, “Damn, that hurts” to “Holy fucking shit, I can barely breathe…”

Now imagine, if you will, four straight days wherein every waking minute you are in some sort of physical pain or discomfort ranging from say a 4 to a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. A day, sure it’s frustrating and possibly a little disorienting, but manageable. Two days, eh, not that bad, I guess, it is only a 7 after all. But four days straight with no signs of stopping? That’s when I start to get worn the fuck down.

Now again, imagine, days, weeks, sometimes months like this spread out over 4 years. Yea, things start to get dicey. It’s a real bitch sometimes; that I will say. I do a much better job of managing things both physically and mentally now thanks to the work of a dedicated doctor and a patient therapist, but there are, of course, still those times when I just feel exhausted and, quite frankly, a little defeated. I do everything I know to help ease the symptoms physically. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. And I do my best to not let the flare-up of the moment allow me to spiral and project my pain into the past or the future. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

So, admittedly, I cried in the car today. I had been at about a 6 or 7 on the pain scale for several hours and it just finally got me. That’s kind of how it happens every once in a while. When a flare up lasts long enough, I just hit a point where I don’t know what else to do, but cry. It’s been a while, but it happened today. It comes out of pure frustration; frustration because I am in pain, frustration because nothing I am doing is making it better, and frustration because I don’t know when it will stop.

I get frustrated because despite my best efforts, sometimes I can’t help but get overwhelmed by all the aspects of life that I feel I am missing out on because of my pain. I get frustrated because I don’t know if it will ever get better. I get frustrated because, well, it hurts! I hurt. Ya know?

I know it will get better. The flare up will eventually subside. Things will level out. But sometimes it’s just hard. Straight up. No bullshit. Sometimes it is just overwhelming. I know a night of sleep will help put perspective on it all and I go to bed tonight hoping that tomorrow will be better. At the end of the day, that’s all we have, really: hope. I have to accept that I only have so much control in all this and beyond that, I just have to hope for the best.

So here’s hoping for a good night’s sleep and a better tomorrow.

PS all the images in the post today are ones I took in an attempt to capture in images some of the feelings I’ve experienced with chronic pain.

Peace and love,

Adam