I want to start off by saying living with Chronic Pain this is horrendous. Living with it on a daily basis, or with flare-ups is dreadful. This disease, illness, a condition that no one knows I will later find out is called Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Hashimoto’s.

You usually hear things like:

“keep on fighting”

“One day at a time”

“take a painkiller and keep living your life”.

When I originally wrote this I wanted to cry, I felt like a weak loser. Upon reflection, I see I wasn’t ready to hear the words I now share.

So why am I digging out this old diary note I wrote? Because I want you to know that, no matter how dark and low you have been, you can get through.

Back to my diary entry …

There seems to be nothing that helps. I’m being given lots of painkillers and I was constantly told I needed antidepressants. But I know it’s not meant for me. I feel forgotten, ignored, written off.

Please give a thought to all who are suffering. The ones who are existing as we are not living, just merely existing. But we are still alive and trying to fight to wake up and just get through one day to the next.

God, the side effects of medication or the illness – I don’t know anymore. Depression, fog, anxiety, nausea, IBS, or social anxiety. I experience all of these challenges silently. No one gets it. No one knows. Nor do they understand. When I do share, the voice in my head says “here you go again – moan, moan, moan. You’re giving me a headache. God knows what others must think. I hate this miserable me. You used to be fun and now you’re just boring”. I grin through the pain and say I’m fine. Today is not too bad.

There’s that tiredness when you’ve been working non-stop for days on end without a break. Multiply that by 100, and maybe again and then the not sleeping on top of that for over a year. And that is close to what I feel like most days.

Having to go through all of this with a newborn (who’s now a toddler) and I’m struggling. I don’t know what day it is most of the time but I’m able to carry on. It’s got progressively worse very quickly and I’ve got no one who gets it. I feel so alone.

I can’t remember much of what happened through the years as I wasn’t conscious a lot of the time. I remember waking in the middle of the night feeling like I had a 24-hour bug, feeling sick, temperature, shaking and then by morning it had gone. But by morning I felt like I was left with the feeling of being run over by a bus that then reversed on me.

I remember one night I suffered from a migraine and neck pain that was so extreme, it felt like I was going to die of the pain. My husband called an ambulance as I was paralysed by the pain – no movement without severe spasms and tears rolling down my face. I was too scared to cry or sob. I just wanted to die. At the hospital, the doctors said, “We think this pain is in your head and unfortunately we will not be giving you any more painkillers”. I was only given what the paramedics had administered and they recommended I see a clinical psychologist. I was discharged six hours later feeling like a raving lunatic. How could I trust the medical system to help me?

This lesson would be repeated over and over on my chronic pain journey.

If you are where I was, please know that it’s not for life – and know you can be more powerful than the pain.