It’s all in my head.  I should just snap out of it; get over it.  I’m making it up.  If I could just give my head a shake and come to my senses…

I don’t need to be like this.  I’m making excuses.  I’m a coward, a liar.  I’m just being lazy.  I’m trying to weasel out of responsibility.

When you get used to people not taking you seriously, it’s hard to take yourself seriously.  I probably doubt myself more than anyone else does, at this stage of my life.

I somatize my emotional pain.  When I’m overwhelmed by grief, when I can’t process it all in my head, I feel it in my body.  Aching joints and muscles, fatigue, heaviness in my chest, stomach aches.  The aches and pains are the worst.  They’re everywhere, from my jaw all the way down my spine, into my hips, knees and elbows, hands and feet.

I used to be able to take an Advil or a Tylenol to help me feel better.  But there’s not any type of OTC pill left that won’t burn holes in my stomach and make me feeling like puking for a whole 24 hours.  So I just tough it out.

I’ve had every type of blood test my doctor could think of – all negative.  Maybe a little auto-immune dysfunction, but nothing worthy of a name.  The rheumatologist was only willing to say that it “could fall under the umbrella of fibromyalgia-type illness”.  No help there.

Because it’s “only psychological” I get down on myself when I get symptoms.  I feel that I should pull up my socks and get on with things.  I become useless.  I lie on the couch under a blanket a lot and wait to feel better.  One time, after a particularly traumatic experience, it took me 8 months to feel better.  I don’t know how I kept working full-time through that episode.  I almost couldn’t bear it.

And now, with four people in my immediate family suffering from serious illnesses, I’m wearing my pain on my body again.  Ouch.

I have friends at church; smiling, freshly-scrubbed friends.  Friends full of energy, who work full-time jobs and then spend their evenings and weekends volunteering for charitable causes, training for fund-raising marathons, and getting masters’ degrees online in their spare time.  They have four times as much energy as I do.

I sing in a church band.  I help our leader, an upstanding 30-year-old who believes fervently in saving the world, with some of the administrative tasks.  He saw how helpful I could be, and wanted me to participate more.  I said “no” to one of his requests, but I knew that more would follow.  I didn’t want to start making up excuses.  I didn’t want him to think that I was trying to weasel out of helping because I was lazy or apathetic.

So I tried to explain.  I wrote him an e-mail describing my “fibromyalgia-type condition” and how I have to limit myself because of it.  How I need extra sleep and downtime etc.  And of course he was understanding.  But I still feel like a liar.

I only told part of the truth.  He and my band-mates still don’t really know what’s going on with me.  They don’t know that it’s psychological.  What would they think if they knew?  How well can they ever get to know me without knowing this about me, this fundamental thing that defines the frame within which I live my life and make my decisions?  Could they possibly understand?  In equal parts I want to tell them everything, and I want them never to find out.