All of us have things we would rather hide from our significant others. Maybe you were a hardcore Justin Bieber fan, or have read some really terrifying, yet enjoyable One Direction fan-fictions. Talking about these things for the first time requires an immense amount of trust, and supreme levels of confidence. For me, what I spent years hiding in both my friendships and relationships was my chronic pain. Now, now, saying that I never spoke about it at all would definitely be wrong, but when I did, I was careful to sugar-coat it, to follow it up with a witty comment, or to instantly shift topics.
If I were to describe what it is like being a partner to someone, while suffering with a chronic illness, I would say it is a little bit like dating a person with a halo, when you have no halo. Now, this is a world where halos are fairly common, in fact they are the norm, and it is incredibly rare to find someone without a halo (you know because you have looked for whole life). To everyone else, halos are ordinary. To make this world altogether more twisted, everyone just assumes you have a halo, until you tell them that you in fact, do not. So, you meet this human, with an incredibly shiny halo, and you like them, and they like you, and blah and blah. Then, you are faced with a choice. Do you tell them you do not have a halo? Because, if you do, you are so incredibly terrified that they will not see you the same way. After all, your entire life, you have allowed people to assume you do have a halo.
Those of us who live with chronic conditions which are invisible face a clear option while interacting with those around us, the option of either disclosing our illnesses and conditions or keeping them hidden. Now, this disclosure is not so simple either. It brings with it questions like: are they ready to know, will they react well, will they disappoint me? And there is no way to actually test. I mean, you could see how they respond to the idea of adopting a limping dog, you could also, in a very classic way, speak to them about this friend of yours, who suffers from said illness.
You could be a sneaky spy, and drop one condition on them for every month that you have known them (a weird present of kinds), or you could simply tell them about your conditions in the same way a doctor once told you, sitting with an apathetic look on their face, as they told them you would live in pain forever.
Now, pre the big reveal, you worry while you are in pain. You worry about this secret you hide, these whole days when you are unable to see the people you love, or send them a message. You worry about this deep dark thing within you, you worry that this thing makes you unworthy of love. And you plan. You plan excessively to hide your illness, because taking that leap of faith to trust someone with this pain that is yours forever, is tough. This pain makes you fear if a relationship with you is fair on anyone at all, if it can ever be fair, when they oscillate between the role of your caregiver, and your friend, or significant other, depending on the type of day you have had.
My pain has been my companion, almost all my life. To share it with someone else, felt like giving a part of me to someone I could not get back. However, when I finally finds the guts to do it, to speak of my pain, every single time it affected me, to stop answering How are you? texts with Good, I realised, I felt closer to people around me then I ever had before, and I found the kind of people who stuck around to ask me my pain levels, learn scales to understand my pain. People who kept records of my appointments and treatments, who heard me rant about pain endlessly, and a stinky cat who somehow always knew to climb into my lap when I was in pain.
It is true, there are still days where I feel like my pain is unfair on them, when I feel the need to overcompensate for, or to hide my pain. To have honest conversations about the extent of my illness and pain, still does not come naturally to me on all days, I have still not quite reclaimed my Justin Bieber phase yet (sic first paragraph). But I have realised that the choice of sharing my pain does not extend to just a single day of a big reveal, rather it is a choice that I make each day between deception, and reality, and deception tires me now. I am happy to be around people who are tired of it too.
