Chronic Illness? It's The Private Selection.

 

One could compare living with chronic illness to living in a private gated community — for one (or a select few if you're lucky).  I live in a great neighborhood filled with families.  However, I do not know of anyone else who has similar health issues that limit their daily activities.  What also makes it feel very isolating is not knowing of anyone around me who understands the pain, struggle, frustrations and complications of having depression and anxiety.  There isn't anyone physically near me who I can talk to freely about how terrible thoughts and negative speak invade my mind and hold me hostage for days at a time.  Unless you have a mental illness, no one really gets it.  It would be nice to have someone close by who I can visit or who can visit me in times of need who deals with the same things as I do.

Being in a different state than my parents, in-laws and sister, I am pretty much left to fend for myself.  I often wish I had the availability of family for days when I'm overwhelmed and incapacitated by pain.  It would be so nice to have someone to do my grocery shopping for me when I can't or bring dinner by when I'm unable to cook or help with the kids when I'm in a bad funk and can't will myself out of the bed.  More so, it would be nice just to have the company because I live a lonely life.  My experiences have been limited to just myself and no one truly can relate to them. I do have many wonderful friends and acquaintances from online support groups and websites that get it, but it's not the same as having that physical support and interaction.  For these reasons, I always feel pushed into a private existence.

That's how I relate my life to being a private selection, because of all the people I talk to who have similar lives, chronic illness makes you feel like the only person on the planet who has to live a life of pain.  Logically, we know that we aren't alone and that there are millions of others out there in the world who are just like us.  What feeds the loneliness is the fact that trying to connect with other people in our communities is difficult.  There aren't local support groups or organizations readily available to the chronic pain patient community and resources are very limited.  It starts in the doctor's office where many are told that their pain is "all in their heads".  That immediately isolates and separates.  You begin to not trust others with your pain and that makes reaching out that much more difficult and unappealing, creating a cycle of seeking acceptance, rejection and isolation.  The cycle can be broken.  It takes courage and dedication to do so.  I try when I'm at my best and sometimes at my very worst.  I'm a work in progress, seeking familiar ground where I am amongst the living.