How having fibromyalgia can change your relationships, your body, your mind, and your soul
Fibromyalgia "Matters"
If you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, PAIN is a constant in your life.
It took almost two years before I was officially diagnosed with fibromyalgia. After the official diagnosis, I expected doctors to tell me that there was a sure shot way to ‘get rid of it’ with a medicine. After trying three types of medicines and feeling like sh*% with all three or four, I decided to just ‘manage the pain’. In fact that’s what one of the doctors advised me to do. She told me to ‘run’ everyday to manage the pain. Running seemed like an absurd form of therapy but the point was to sweat it out. I tried, but the pain made it so hard to even walk at times. Running was out of the question.
I found myself feeling sad and depressed after a lot of trial and error with different medications. In fact, I started to feel this ‘given up on life’ kinda vibe. My pain management tools became my best friends. I started to carry around a heat pad wherever I went and started to take epsom – salt baths every single night.
Waking up at 3 am with spasms, in my spine and lower back, was not fun but I knew that if I slept longer than that, the spasms would get worse. So I was up early everyday and spent the day feeling weak and sleepy. I was drowning and needed a life jacket to help me float.
What you get is NOT what you see
Physically, it was obvious that I was suffering. Because I was so good at faking my well-being, only a few people could decipher my state – physical, mental and emotional. My mind started to play games with me and I started to believe there was something terribly wrong with me. Why else would I, at 35, be out of a job, sick with an auto-immune disease like Fibromyalgia, at home? I was not able to play with my two adorable boys anymore and they started to spend time with me reading on the couch instead. My husband had to pick up the slack and even though he didn’t complain (bless him!), I knew the sickness in me was draining him.
Over the next little while, I stopped wanted to see friends or socializing… I started to stay home with my heat pad and avoid all social engagements. Even though, I did try to make it to some get togethers with family and friends, there were days when I was physically too fatigued to drive. In those moments, I felt deep shame. And to help everyone understand why I was cancelling appointments, I started venting about the pain. Maybe they would me better and love me in spite of my dis-ease.
But the complaining got too much for even people that loved me. I don’t blame them. Over-time, a lot of my friends and relatives moved away emotionally from me and I let them. I did not have the energy within me to help people understand what fibromyalgia was and how it was impacting my mind, body and soul.
During the first three years, I had lost most of my friendships and ‘loved ones’, emotionally.
Losing my identity was the low point of my life.
Fibromyalgia made me lose my sense of self, my work, my friends, my relatives, my body and mind. The only few relationships that remained were being tested everyday. In these circumstances, I was not a pleasant person to be around so the people that decided to stay, stayed because they believed in me and my own will to turn things around. They accepted me for who I was then, not who they wanted me to be.
When you do not know what a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia really means for your life
I can tell you that if you have fibromyalgia, the pain will take over your life and you will have to let go of some people, things and aspects of your life that don’t serve you anymore. And then you are going to have to learn to manage those changes along with all the other changes in your body.
Fibromyalgia caused me to feel:
1. Physical trauma due to the chronic pain and fatigue;
2. Emotional trauma induced by feelings of low self worth and low self esteem;
3. Mental trauma because of not using my mind the way I was used to at work;
and
4. A complete loss of identity. My previous life was no more. My work relationships ended, my friendships stalled, my body and mind didn’t function anymore.
Because of all these new traumas I was collecting on the daily, I started questioning my value to my family, my community and my country. I started to feel like I was a liability and un-worthy of love and respect.
This turned into a real low point in my life where I was questioning life itself. If I didn’t have my husband’s back and support and two little kids who still loved me, I do not know what I would have done to cope.
Sometimes you need to fall so low, that you have no option but to rise.
I do not think I could have fallen lower than I did at that point in my life. If I had kept going that way, the path ahead of me did not have much goodness to offer. My situation was ripe to make a complete U-turn … all I needed was some prompting and a little push. And that push came in the form of my husband. He had seen me at my high and now he was watching me lose everything (on my own). Eventually, he spoke up and asked me to choose something different.
A little timely push from someone that cares.
And that’s all I needed to start to think differently. I started to ask myself questions like “what would it be like to not be stressed out all the time?” and “What does being relaxed really mean?”.
My willingness to experience a different life, a better life, presented healing opportunities for me. It took some time but I was able to heal my mind, body and soul.
Along the way, I found my strengths and let go of my weaknesses. And most importantly, I connected with myself. And that’s the only reason I continue healing.
I am forever grateful for god or the superpower holding us all together and for my three earthly angels.
If you have experienced something similar I would love to connect with you in a private facebook group or on my Instagram page.
Find out why I decided to share my store by reading my post called My Healing Journey
