Yes I know I missed yesterday's daily post. I'll deal with that later. Right now, this post is a bit more important.
First things first, go read this post by Indigo about “What it's like to live with Depression” What follows will make a lot more sense if you do.
So now that you know what having depression is like I want you to imagine more. What if, on top of the depression, you also have Fibromyalgia?
This is what my life is like.
That 20 ton weight that is hovering over you? Is joined by the Ice-Pick Attacking Pain Swarm. Imagine half-inch scaled metal ice picks that can fly and attack in swarms and love to attack you. They attack at random times, in random places, diving the sharp points all at once into your muscles and joints. Sometimes the swarm is small, only attacking one area, one limb. Other times, it attacks larger areas. Sometimes it's a mega-swarm that makes your whole body ache.
Add to this, the fact that sleeping soundly for any length of time is pretty much impossible due to pain and possibly due to apnea. Fibromyalgia and sleep apnea often are pals. So you are not only depressed, randomly attacked by sharp, throbbing pain of unpredictable location and duration but you are also tired and your ability to focus is dulled by sleep deprivation.
This is what my life is like.
You get up in the morning and not only are you trying to deal with emotional difficulties, but you have to assess where the pain is today. If it's in my hands/wrists/arms any button shirts are out of the question. If it's in my back/hips/knees/legs I may have to use my shower chair just to get clean this morning. If I've got full-body pain, I toy with the idea of calling in to work, but the nega self says “If you do that, you'll get fired.” so you drag yourself out of bed, pain and all, and try to get on with the day.
Let's say for the sake of simplicity, that the Pain Swarm is only attacking your arms today. You wake up in the morning and it hurts to move your arms. You are tired, and want to go back to sleep, so you hit the snooze a few times. By the time you are able to be coherent, you have less than 90 minutes to get to work. Most people who are normal and healthy see this as plenty of time. However, you have fibromyalgia and depression. This is a race against the clock.
You pull yourself out of bed and try to focus on the first task of getting ready. For me it's usually taking a shower, since I lay my clothes out the night before. But let's say you aren't like me. So you get up and you go to your closet. You work in an office so you have to find appropriate attire. But, since you were so tired that you practically slept through most of the weekend, you didn't do laundry. You have 1 pair of pants and 2 shirts. One had buttons and is long-sleeved the other is short-sleeved without buttons. Only the short-sleeved shirt goes with the pants (the pants are brown, the long-sleeved shirt is black. The short-sleeved shirt is teal.) The colors are important because already you feel like you hate yourself and how you look so you don't want to mismatch the colors and face potentially more ridicule. You gather the items along with the requisite socks and underwear and put them where you will get dressed, and you decide that for warmth you will search for a cardigan to throw over the shirt. You finally find one that isn't stained or stinky. You now have 70 minutes to shower, get dressed, make & eat breakfast and get out the door and to work on time. Yes, you have wasted 20 minutes just picking out your clothes from a very small amount of choices. If you're like me, you probably spend another 3 minutes or so feeling bad about yourself for taking so long with that.
Now the shower. Your arms hurt, so you are okay to stand. Otherwise you'd need the shower chair to sit in which takes more time to find. You decide to set a timer, so you don't run over the 15 minutes you give yourself. (Because if you don't, you may space out and forget to wash your hair or condition your hair, or you may remember to wash everything, but you've taken an hour and ten minutes.) Despite setting the timer, you still take 20 minutes to shower because due to spacing out staring at the wall because you're so tired, you still haven't washed your hair when the timer goes off.
So you now have 50 minutes to get to work. Getting to work and to your desk takes at least 12 minutes, so in reality you really only have 38 minutes to do this. You wrap yourself in towels and go back to get dressed. You have to stop for 5 minutes after donning every bit of bottom-half-of-the-body clothing because you're tired and trying to stay on task. So just that takes 15 minutes. Then the upper body. But since your arms hurt it takes another 15 minutes to get your bra (if you're female, guys take about 10 minutes), shirt, and cardigan on. So now you have 8 minutes for breakfast and to get out the door. Screw it you say, and you get your coat and shoes on and just leave. You barely make it to your desk on time.
Then you spend the next however-many-hours (for me it's 5 since I work part time) at your desk doing your job. You have to use all of your focus to work, keep the depression weight from crushing you, and deal with your co-workers and possibly customers. If you're an introvert like me, it's even harder. If you work in an environment that's tense, hostile, or where you don't quite get along with your co-workers, this is even harder than THAT. I you managed to get lunch, you do okay because you have fuel. If you didn't you are now starving. You get done with your day and try to get home.
After you get home, there is dinner to be made, the next day to prepare for, if you're a student like me you may have classes or homework so you may not even be home yet, but you get the picture. By the time you get to bed for the night, you are exhausted. If you have any reserves left, you get your outfit ready the night before (because you multitasked and did laundry while cooking (if you have laundry in your home)) and you get ready-to-drink protein shakes or some other grab-and-go method of breakfast for the next day. You do the same for your lunch because it's easier.
You undress, get into pajamas and get into bed. You're laying in bed now and for some reason, even though you're totally drained, you can't sleep. Why? Because throughout the day the pain swarms have attacked your arms, but now they're attacking your legs. Your legs feel like not only are they getting jammed with small ice picks, they are electrified now and your legs are spasming and jumping like crazy, keeping you awake.
After a few hours, your body just passes out. It's now 4 hours before your alarm goes off and you have to do it all over again.
All the while you are dealing with the 20-ton emotional weight that could crush you. You feel bad because you know you should be able to do better than this. You feel lazy when the weekend comes and you never get out of bed really because you're too tired and drained from the week. If you live alone, you've got it really rough because you have no one to help you at all. I'm lucky in that respect because I at least have my husband Jason to help take care of things like laundry, cooking, and helping take care of Ranger. But even though it helps, there's the emotional impact. Due to pain, I cannot have sex with my husband as much as we'd both like. Due to pain and fatigue, I can't do as much around the house. I can barely do my job and school (when I'm in school) let alone household stuff, or fun things.
You can often feel depressed. You feel worthless. And because no one can see your fibromyalgia, no one can tell why you're in pain, some people think you fake the pain to get attention. You go to doctors who either believe you, or tell you that you just need to lose weight/go to therapy/stop being a hypochondriac. If you finally do get a doctor to believe you, it's becuase you have seen at least 4 different doctors or more. You feel like if you were gone, your partner could go and find someone healthier to be with. Your job could find a better employee. (Plus you constantly live in fear of getting fired) No one would miss you at all. Or at least, if they did, it wouldn't last long.
This is what my life is like. I deal with these two conditions EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yes there are treatments for fibromyalgia that can decrease the pain and improve sleep. However, not everyone has health insurance and/or the money to afford the treatments. If you don't have the money, you just live in this constant cycle of getting through the day, hoping that one day, there will be fewer/smaller pain swarms and things to make you feel that living is actually worth it.
It's not easy. But I deal. If you're outside of it, it's hard to understand. I hope this post at least illustrates it somewhat. It took me 6 days just to write this post.
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