Girl Gang Of Pain

**Trigger Warning: mention of anxiety, suicide, death, and grief**

I often wonder how all the mental heath problems I have fit in my head. Obviously this stems from a purely juvenile, cartoon version of my head being an empty vessel with the mental illnesses collecting like floating amoebic blobs ready to expand and contract depending on which needs more attention that day. I sometimes feel like I'm collecting labels like limited edition figurines. I don't think I’m trying to do this, more that I'm just noticing it happening and then doing something about it in an often futile attempt to help myself. I’ve recently found out that I have OCD, this is something I have long since suspected as I have some classic symptoms but it’s not something I’ve ever pursued a diagnosis of as I never thought it was bad enough. I laugh. Bad enough? I never thought losing countless nights of sleep because I couldn’t stop intrusive thoughts, or smacking myself in the head to make the horrific thoughts go away was bad enough? I never thought how germ-phobic I am, how I physically recoil if anyone so much as breathes on me, or how I am 90% flammable at all times because of how much hand sanitizer I use was bad enough? I was coping. Newsflash: I wasn’t coping.

Now I have something called Health Anxiety. This is now what used to be called Hypochondria but since that word, like so many others, has been used to mock and degrade it has been changed to reflect the seriousness of the condition for the modern day. The stigma is still there but only if you can find its maiden name. Apparently this is a branch of OCD and in reading that I basically could no longer deny the existence of having it. Goddamnit. I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to in order to cope; such as distractions...like writing this piece or waiting patiently for my NHS therapy to begin. I’m having a lot of medical tests done, I suppose to rule out anything physical and I have to wait until they are over before I can begin therapy. I suppose I understand why, they can’t very well go around telling me it's all in my head if it’s not. I’m not really sure how I'll make it until then though, I am so afraid of death that I have made a crude will, and every night before I go to sleep I say goodbye to my partner and my cat. I don’t know if you can imagine how soul destroying that is, to be so convinced you won't wake up in the morning that you have to say goodbye to your loved ones every single night, but it is.

I think more than anything I am afraid of the uncertainty of it. Not what happens after, I’ll be dead so I expect I won’t care but it’s about the when and the how. I’ve never wanted to live forever, in fact I’ve spent most of my life being completely suicidal, wishing to die, or feeling invincible but if someone came up to me right now with an immortality elixir, or immortal vampires were a thing then I would snatch that elixir quicker than a magician whipping a tablecloth or whine at/charm that vampire until they gave it up. I’d live forever in pain and anguish right now if meant that I could just have the relief of certainty from this anxiety. Can you tell I’m getting kind of desperate? I’m going to try and afford some private therapy while I’m waiting as I need something, anything to take some of the pressure off. I miss the days when I wasn’t so anxious. Or disabled for that matter. Fuck sake.

Pain, Pain, Go Away...

*Trigger Warning - Suicide*

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this new pain clinic I have been going to, namely the ways in how I cope with my situations, circumstances, and disabilities outside of medication. This has become more important lately with how much extra pressure my physical health has been putting on my mental health. I have been evermore limited in the things I usually do to cope and that has taken more of a toll than I could imagine. As it always goes, the things I took for granted became apparent when they were taken away or made that much harder to achieve. I had to find new pleasure in smaller victories or often I would cave and buy something shiny and new just to give me a little positive anticipation and a small feeling of hope. Fortunately I was in a position to do that, I know many aren’t this lucky. I can’t count how many times I’ve felt that desperate clutch of hopelessness. I have been more suicidal while frightened to die than I have been in a long time. 

Activities, relationships, and routines can be so important for people of varying abilities. A loss of routine can easily spiral in to a loss of self, of identity. Activities give me a sense of hope, of pleasant anticipation (albeit not fully). It is so much more than just doing a thing, it is a purpose and then a sense of achievement. It is a connection formed, an idea sparked, and possibly a decent conversation. It is a relief from the pain, from the monotony of being confined in one way or another. Relationships are important for everyone but even more so to those who are differently-abled. I have pushed people away because I was ashamed that they would see me as something other, something less. I didn’t want them to see how bad it was because I was afraid of judgement and pity. I didn’t want every conversation to be centred around what I can no longer do. Outside of the spoonie community it is rare to find anyone who would be as proud of you as you are of yourself for getting dressed that day, or doing the small mundane thing that terrifies you. Relationships can be hard for those with varying abilities, especially those with hidden impairments as the curious nature of people means they will naturally seek to understand which often puts us in an educational role. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me what my disabilities are in casual conversation. Then comes the uncomfortable task of trying to condense my incredibly complicated array of symptoms in to one easily understandable summary, which usually fails miserably. 

I know all too well that people can harshly judge that which they don’t understand, and that is something that people with varying abilities, especially those that are invisible, navigate on a daily basis. Judgement from the person watching you get out of your car to see how disabled you are because of the space your blue badge allows you to occupy, judgement from the GP because your complicated list of problems is too long for the time slot, judgement from the specialists or ER doctors because you have to list all your conditions and medications and one person couldn’t possible have all these problems... Every day people live with being judged by society for a variety of reasons, none more so than those in marginalised communities, and when those marginalisations intersect it can create a much harder world to find a sense of self in. The daily battles fought fraughtly against pain, nausea, fatigue, spasms, depression, anxiety, irritability, inability, exclusion, hopelessness, and loneliness only gets that much more complicated when we add judgement and insensitivity in to the mix.  I don’t want able-bodied and neurotypical people to be more sensitive because we’re special little snowflake millennials or whatever ridiculous way to describe younger generations has been concocted, I want them to be more sensitive because it costs very little and our lives are hard enough without being constantly invalidated at every opportunity. 

And I thought it was just about finding a way to cope with my physical pain.