ouch

I've been thinking a lot about chronic pain. It's been a real trip dealing with it the past 2+ years. I rally between being a whiner and a stoic. I prefer shutting up about it, but whether I like it or not, it's insidious. I'd like to say it's taught me patience, but in reality, it has increased my impatience with myself. I make my body do what it complains about, but I pay. I pay with pain. I pay with frustration. Frustration that I can't do more. I think the best lesson that came out of my accident was increased understanding. You can see when someone's in pain. Not always from a limp or a cane. It's in their eyes. Pain comes in all sorts of threads...physical and emotional. It's exhausting and on some days, overwhelming. In the best of times, chronic pain is tolerable because it's routine. I'm used to it, for better or worse. It's not going anywhere. It's like the stages of grief, you come to accept it. You are grieving for the old you. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but we all cope in our own ways, and for me that makes life more normal.