I’m a chronic pain patient on morphine. (Note: As of 2013, I am no longer on opiates, but every day I wish I could have something, just a little, to take the edge off.)
It amuses me when healthy people ascribe romantic ideas or evaluations of the experience of pain, especially chronic or severe pain the likes of which most of them have not experienced.
More than once, I’ve been told by different healthy people how inspiring I am, or how I rise above the pain to knit, study or just be a functional adult in my normal life. I’m not the first, nor the last, disabled woman to have this revelation (but this is an excellent post by the Disabled Feminist that reinforces my thesis).
On some level, I realize that most of them only mean well, but still, those types of people make me want to crush their larynxes with my boot.
They don’t usually see me, or other pain patients (such as my husband and sister who both have fibromyalgia), on the really bad days, because on those days, we’re not well enough to grace them with our magical, inspiring presence.
I’m betting that the screaming, throwing up and moaning from pain is sooo not in their idea of the romantic.
If, by the end of reading this post, you still think I and other disabled people are inspiring, please check out another post of mine, and a different post by the same blogger, Disabled Feminist.
But I hope, instead, that a lightning bolt of reality has benevolently struck you.
