I’ve discovered something rather unpleasant this last week. No doubt it’s become quite apparent to anyone who happens to be reading my crap – but I’m not coping so well as I would have people believe. It seems I’ve developed a habit of acting like I’ve got it together and all is as it should be. I only ever really go ‘ah stab me in the forehead with this fork!’ here… on this painful journal. So I was kinda taken aback last week when my Mum and BigSal came over and they seemed surprised to see that I was in a worse state than I’d been letting on…. and that would be because I know they don’t read this silly thing – sensible people that they are.
When people say to me ‘Hey how you doing?’ I usually respond with ‘Good thanks, what have you been up to?’ When people say to me ‘Hey how’s your back treating you?’ I usually respond with ‘Ah, same old shit. So how is your husband/wife/kid/job etc?’
I have become quite adept at deflecting enquiries about my health (years and years of practice when I was on IVF) and tend to swiftly change the topic to the point that the people I see socially don’t really get the full story. If I am frank about that there isn’t many people I’ve been socializing with at the moment as I’ve been feeling ummm… ill equipped to cope with ‘other’s’ of late.
Mostly it’s because I don’t really want to go into it every time I see someone… because if I did the conversations would go something more like this: ‘Hey how you doing, Borys. How’s the back?’ and then I’d respond with –
‘Oh hey. My back is royally fucked thanks for aksing 🙂 My neurosurgeon writes that ‘Ms Borys is unemployable and her condition is unlikely to improve’ but you get that. Oh and my orthopaedic surgeon has recently told me that my goal of being drug free again and preferably pain free is ‘totally unrealistic given my condition’ and yet neither of them have anything viable by way of treatment to offer me. I’ve become so desperate that I’ve been seeing a naturopath though she doesn’t seem to even be able to spell half the medications I’m on and diagnoses I’ve been given let alone know how they will impact on my future prognosis… so I’m not holding up much hope there. These days i am in pain from the moment I wake up until the moment I kick the insomnia by heavily medicating myself every night. I am becoming increasingly anti-social and misanthropic because there’s barely a handful of people whose company I can tolerate for more than ten minutes together given that I feel as though I spend most of my waking hours trying not to scream. Basically I am finding that I simply don’t have the energy required to ‘make nice and pretend everything is okay’. So I’ve been avoiding people and oh, hey can you tell I resent how my life isn’t turning out the way it’s supposed to and how much I deteste the fact that back pain is starting to turn me into some I don’t really like very much. But yeah… what have you been up to?’ I think not.
It’s bad enough being in pain all fucking day and spending your every waking moment thinking about being in pain all fucking day without talking about it all fucking day when anyone enquires about it. So yeah. I’ve learnt to deflect questions and try and keep it to myself. I hide behind bright coloured clothes a lot (people don’t tend to notice the pained look about your eyes so much when you’re in candy pink so bright they need sunglasses) and it’s only about three or four people who when they ask me ‘Hey How are you doing today?’ that I find myself burying my face in their chest or sobbing on their shoulder saying ‘Boo hoo hoo. I’m so fucked. I can’t take this anymore. Poor me. Poor me.’ or something to that effect.
And so much for me not going blargh about my back tonight… staunch like marshmallow I am.
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