After three days completely over doing it in Disneyland, I found myself having to take the day off. And by off, I mean sitting in my hotel room on a heatpack, drugged off my brain and trying to figure out what I was going to do to ameliorate the anticipated ongoing flare ups that the rest of my itinerary had in store for me.
The Small Child was with the long suffering grandparents at Universal Studios for the day so I sort of got to fall apart in peace… I don’t like him thinking of me as a sick person, or an
incapable person or worse as disabled or an invalid. But the truth of the matter is that all these things are fitting descriptions for people like me with chronic pain conditions and the associate limitations. 🙁
I know exactly why I did it. We were at Disneyland, 15,000kms from home, this is likely to be the only time he ever gets to do Disneyland as a child (I’m certainly not coming back any time soon) and I wanted him to make the most of it. We had only just managed to get him over his longstanding fear of roller coasters and I thought between us four adults we’d be able to keep up with him… but I wasn’t counting on being with two that are scared of heights and one that doesn’t like roller coasters much at all.
So next thing I knew, every time the Small Child said he wanted to go again; there I was on the damn thing again knowing full well how much pain it was causing. Sure it was fun at the time, and I even managed to put on a creditable face of having a good time. After all, I’ve had twenty-two years practice in pretending like all is well with the world and you’d be surprised what you can keep to yourself until you have time to fall into a tearful puddle of painful jangling nerves in private later.
It might have been ill advised, it might have been foolhardy even, but my heart was in the right place. I really wanted to make sure my son had a memorable time at the theme park with his Mum, and didn’t want him going home disappointed or bored… so I did everything I could to make sure that happened. But jesus titty fucking Christ I am totally paying for it today. 🙁
