Struggles and Challenges

I don’t like to talk about my own struggles often because it makes me feel extremely vulnerable but here it goes anyway because I am working on being more open and not worrying so much what other people think.

Everyone has their own struggles in life. Even if they aren’t going thru something hard or challenging at the moment..they have in the past, will in the future, or they know someone who is struggling with something. You may never know what someone really has going on inside because trust me I know firsthand that looks can be deceiving.

If I could get paid for every time someone said to me that I am too pretty or too beautiful to be in pain, it could definitely help to make up for not being paid by disability. Since my illness is not able to be seen physically, it is easy for people to look at me like I’m crazy and say the pain is just in my head and decide I am not really in pain because it can’t be seen. And to be honest, I try to hide my pain from people because a lot of the time I hate this new in pain version of me and I want people to see me for who I was before the pain. So I push myself when I can manage to get out of bed and I do my makeup and my hair, put on some nice clothes and jewelry and I look like the old pain free beautiful me on the outside and give it everything I have to smile thru the pain. The pain makes me feel ugly and I don’t want other people to know how hard my struggles are because if I don’t like myself this way then how can other people like this in pain version of me.

I know deep down inside I am still me and other people may not understand what I mean by being worried what others think of me because those who know me know that I never really cared growing up. I obviously cared a little because who doesn’t but I did what I wanted, acted how I wanted, and wore what I wanted even when people made fun of it because I liked me and I liked my choices so I really didn’t worry about anyone’s opinion of me but my own. Looking back, it felt great for me but I don’t always think it was great for my relationships with other people because I was often self-absorbed and didn’t take other people’s thoughts and situations into consideration. I feel like I have gone from one extreme to the other and now I am working on finding a middle ground.

The pain has brought on all kinds of feelings I have never felt before like insecurities, self-confidence issues, feelings of being worthless, and anxiety & depression to name a few. But it has also brought me so many opportunities to get in touch with myself and feel more empathetic and compassionate towards other people because everyone faces struggles in life. The pain has brought me up close & personal with my thoughts & feelings and spending so much time alone has given me the opportunity to discover those parts of myself that I can work on to improve and be the best version of me.

I have always been a very positive person but being in pain every second of everyday is such a negative experience and it makes it extremely hard to stay positive. It is a constant struggle and I have to work at staying positive thru all the hurt and it is really tough because positivity always came so effortlessly to me before.

So my point is that you can’t always tell what struggles someone is facing and so that is why I love this quote so much because sometimes we are so caught up in ourselves that we don’t think about what someone else might be going thru. “If we could look into each other’s hearts, and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”

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