When you live with pain, you become very blase about it. It takes more and more to make you feel things. My physical pain is very intense at the moment. I am having to use 2 crutches to mobilise, everything is a chore. But things have to be done, and no one else will do them for me, so I have to get through that barrier, the "I can't". People stare at you when you use a disabled parking bay - you can see them stare, looking you up and down, taking in the crutches, the way I move. The crutches make it o.k. - she can't walk properly, she can park there. Everywhere, judgmental eyes - when I take too long at the till, because I can't grip the coins in my purse, if I drop something and can't bend to pick it up, watching me.
I would really like to be invisible. To go about my business, with no one looking, no one judging. I have to use painkillers in a patch form. Sometimes they are visible under my clothes, I wouldn't mind if people asked. I do mind if people stare.
Depression is an evil beast, but one I have lived with in different forms for so many years now, I think I would miss it if it went. It has made me the person I am today, for better or worse. At the moment I do not like myself at all, but, that is my problem, not yours. I have spent many years in therapy, many months in hospital, weeks / days / hours hating myself and all that I am. So I swallow my antidepressants, and paint a smile upon my face. Mum, wife, teacher, friend, so the days go by.
