I stumbled onto this Migraine.com link:
https://migraine.com/?p=107372
And with that link on Facebook was the following "description" of the post:
"Being in pain almost every single day for so many years is emotionally and physically draining... Through navigating my new normal I have learned several life-changing lessons that have shifted how I see myself."
I can say with experience that pain, migraines & otherwise, are practically a living Hell on someone's life. It can affect relationships, work & specifically job performance, and lots more. I know that for my own experiences, pain kept me from going to my late cousin's two daughters' birthdays occasionally, I canceled plans with friends on a number of occasions, canceled plans with family, called out sick quite often when I was working, etc. I'm glad I'm not on the path to a computer support tech Associate of Applied Sciences degree, and I've switched to an Associate of Arts Music degree w/ designation (whatever "w/ designation" means). I figured music has been a very helpful form of therapy for me to heal, both physically & also mentally/emotionally/etc.
If I'm able to complete this new degree program, and I am able to put into words to express how I feel about my experiences with chronic pain, how it did a number on my relationships with friends & family, and how I paid the price of chronic pain suffering with losing some good paying jobs, not being able to get gainfully employed after I walked away from my last job in 2008 following a mental health breakdown. It was the sum result of having to suffer migraine pain daily, following by living with an asshole of an unsympathetic, very misinformed, and highly narcissistic sociopathic older brother, and his merry band of gay fuck-buds. I have nothing against gays/homosexual men, or even homosexual women, bisexual women/men, etc. But my brother IS the one exception in my book.
As much as my mother likes to paint a picture of him being "sensitive" to my medical problems (allegedly), I know him very differently, and although she may feel he's a different man now, I don't have any sympathy for him any longer. I used to care, but I just can't anymore. Not after him mistreating me, sometimes harshly. Living with him twice while we have been adults has been less than successful. He's the kind of dickhead who went out to go drinking & partying, and having a good time with drugs (a chip off the old block from our late father), and yet had the gall to accuse me of faking pain, making me stressed out even more, and claiming I wasn't "sacrificing enough" to work hard to be able to pay rent, because apparently he sacrificed plenty to go drinking, partying, getting drunk or high, or both.
Yeah, I have little to no sympathy anymore about him. I still care about him, and love him because he's my only brother, but I cannot trust him, I cannot be sympathetic to his "problems" especially his medical, and I don't feel I should have to. If this person, my brother, feels so high and mighty, he can suffer and then fix himself all on his own.
Seriously, whenever mom brings him up, I instantly tune it out. I can't let that shithead rent space in my head in any capacity. He can go be gay all he wants, but as for wanting sympathy from me whenever his majesty suffers a medical or health problem, I have vowed not to indulge his royal highness for such forced "feelings", aka "I require your unfettered attention & your devout sympathies for myself, since I am my own brand of royalty!"
I digress. Pain can have such a detriment to daily living, and have a debilitating effect on keeping and maintaining good healthy relationships. And when some friends, or even family members (like in my own experiences), are dismissing chronic pain as being "faked" or being not real, making condescending comments, or being unsympathetic, making harsh comments about "working hard", & my favorite, "You gotta push through the pain!", it makes life with chronic pain unnecessarily harder than it ought to be. I mean, chronic pain in any form is tough enough to live with as it is, but having a family member like my own experience with my older sibling who is dismissive about your pain, doesn't understand it, doesn't want to understand it except their own interpretations & misunderstandings of said chronic pain, or isn't interested in what kind of factors that can make the pain worse, it makes those familial relationships much more strained, and certainly doesn't help the mental health part of it.
Things like anxiety, depression, and other things while experiencing chronic pain is often misunderstood, and even dismissed by some friends and family members as "fake depression" or fake anxiety. Unfortunately, until those same friends or family members truly experience chronic pain for years on end, they won't ever "get it". Except in my older brother's case.
In his mind, he's the only person who works hard, has ever worked hard, or ever WILL work hard, and that nobody works as hard as he does. So, imagine if he had cheonic pain. He'd claim he'd be the only person who's EVER had chronic pain, that nobody can relate to the kind of chronic pain he has, and that only he could ever have experienced the chronic pain he'd have, and that he alone is the only "authority" of knowledge about chronic pain. Ever!
That's his mentality. And that's why whenever mom brings up that he doesn't feel well, I can't help but have as much unsympathetic feelings towards him as much as he had with me when I was experiencing a shit ton of pain that I now understand was due to an eye that had lots of problems that went undiagnosed.
Anyway, I just hope that with the one & only exception being my older brother, that many more people, as well as employers nowadays are far more understanding of chronic pain sufferers. I hope there are, but somehow I doubt Comcast/Xfinity in Denver is any better than when my employment was terminated with them in 2007 due to excessive absences & time off, all of it was to address my medical & health problems. Fortunately, not only did Comcast NOT have a representative in my hearing for unemployment benefits, but the hearing officer found in my favor since I did make an effort to go to work even while having severe pain on the day I was officially "out of bounds" with more "excessive absences" as per Comcast.
Unfortunately, Sitel in Las Vegas was far worse. When I was hospitalized for three days on a legal 2000 hold (I had intentionally tried to OD on over-the-counter medications mixed with what little pain medication I had left). Upon my return, my supervisor said, and I quote "I'm glad you're better, but THAT can't happen again!".
Between that & living with an older brother who treated me as though I never before worked a job ever, I just fucking snapped. That's when I logged off my workstation, logged off my call center phone system ID, went into the break room to see some friends posts, and then I walked out the front door after picking up my cell phone from the security desk. I had it with both that workplace, living with my older brother, & the excessive amount of pain from migraines that I now understand was due to a detached retina, my glaucoma Baerveldt implants were too big possibly causing scar tissue, and due to all of that was the nerve damage from so many dozens of eye surgeries.
So, while migraines are a physical health issue primarily, they do have a mental health component, and if one's support network is less than supportive, chronic pain of any kind can be a really difficult situation to have to deal with on a regular basis.
Anyway, I'm ranting. I just feel like if I rant here, I can get some healthy, and friendly advice on how to properly process it so I can heal. I hope one day to write music based on my experiences with chronic pain, dealing with unrelenting hardships & strained relationships with family members. Some of whom have little to no sympathy except for themselves being that they're narcissistic. They also have little to no understanding of how chronic pain is such a difficult problem for someone to live with, much less deal with their life on that daily basis. Especially when that chronic pain sufferer is trying to make sure that they have the resources to be able to get through each day, and eventually get better if they're able to.
I want someday to have people see the world through my eyes, not to pun another favorite Phil Collins song from the Disney animated film "Brother Bear" soundtrack. He did some excellent music for both Brother Bear, and Tarzan! I hope I'm able to meet PC someday. It would be a most excellent honor.
Someday, hopefully soon, I can express what I have felt for the first 40 yrs of my life in music. The severe anxieties living with my family growing up, especially with an older sibling who was almost worse than the bullies at school. Meeting not one, but two young ladies in grade school that showed me that there are good people in this fucked up world, this fucked reality, who do have a sympathetic heart, an open mind, & are not judgmental & not having some kind of darkness in their eyes & their heart.
The depression during middle / junior high school after I left southern California to help support my dad (emotionally), and then years later not only having regretted that decision, but also having resentment toward my father. When we were going to help my mother and older bro move to Colorado Springs in 1992, I had it in my head how I was going to ask my mom or my dad, probably mom, to help me go see... a friend. To tell that friend that she was the best thing to happen to me in a long time, and that I would never forget her & what she had done that kept me sane during that last year of grade school in 6th grade at College Park Elementary school in Costa Mesa, California. In fact, if I hadn't left, I would have attended Costa Mesa High School with that young lady.
Anyway, my dad tried to get back to Costa Mesa with a car, but the car ended up having mechanical problems not even 40 minutes out of Colorado Springs. He tried to get plane tickets for the two of us, but could not afford it. When my uncle Roger, my dad's younger brother, offered to help us, my dad refused. In what was probably another stupid decision, I offered to stay behind. I ended up giving up my plans to meet that young woman so that my dad could retrieve my mother & brother. It wasn't so much that I gave up that idea of meeting her one last time, but more the reaction my dad had when I said it was okay for me to stay behind. When I said I would stay behind, he shot up from him laying on the couch, and got ready to go in less than 10 minutes. THAT was what pissed me off! I was very unhappy, emotionally upset, & absolutely angry. I never forgave him for that, and obviously never forgot either.
I have digressed again. I guess the bottom line is that people who have chronic pain on a daily or somewhat frequent basis have to often suffer some scrutiny from family members & relatives, some friends, some workplace colleagues & management especially supervisors & managers who don't see a 20-something chronic pain suffer. They see a 20-something young man who probably (in their minds) wanted only to get out of work to go party, go drinking, go do anything but work. No, they suspect the worst because of other workers who've done those things. Even with a doctor's notes, or even a well-documented fact of disability statement from a physician, some employers nowadays don't even take that as proof of being disabled or even have chronic pain of any kind.
My mother and I talked about this very topic the other day. We both agree that when your disability is not immediately visible, i.e. using a cane, have a cast or a brace on one or both arms, an arm sling, or something that makes the disability "visible", that nobody especially employers don't take your disability as a serious matter. Since 2010, I have begun to use my blind cane regularly. I don't need to use one, but it does help show people that I do have a vision deficiency. Before I used it, I got very nasty remarks from some folks, even got yelled at by another customer in an Arc thrift store for trying to look at the same stuff he was looking at. I almost nailed him in his family jewels for that, but my better judgment prevailed in having my first assault charge on an idiot customer.
After I have begun using it, people go out of their way to be .... accommodating. They'll give me a wide berth, open doors for me, ask if I need help, etc. People treat you differently when your disability is "visible" via using some kind of disability device. Now that I'm classified as being permanently disabled (notwithstanding my migraines now that I have them under a measure of control), I have begun reminding my mother about how some disabilities are invisible when she suspects someone parked in a disability parking space isn't disabled at all. Even years before we moved to Colorado, I had to keep reminding her of that fact.
In hindsight, I wish I would have used a blind cane or a "white cane" when I was in K-12 schools. Bullies would NOT have been such a problem if I'd used a blind cane, but my late father didn't believe in nurturing the "disability" aka my vision impairment (my left eye being blind from birth). He didn't believe in going to doctors, going to hospitals, much less having health insurance of any kind. Look where it got him! He died of a heart attack, and hadn't gone to a single doctor that I know of during my lifetime.
Because of his unwillingness to go to doctors, I regularly visit my primary care physician, I go to my numerous specialists, & go to counseling on a semi-regular basis as well. My older brother, while still an asshole, has now started to see a doctor, and has even found out he has multiple allergies. I wished he was allergic to being an asshole. Could've broken his narcissism. Even if it was just a little.
Again, I know I'm ranting. Maybe once I'm back in class to learn my new passion, I will be posting more about my progress in learning my passion in music! Maybe even learn to write a song or two about these experiences. Maybe someone out there has gone through some of the same shit I've been through. Maybe if they knew someone understands their feelings, they might begin to reach out to friends & family who do understand, and aren't douchebags like my older brother.
I want to post fun stuff again. No more writing about what drives my depression, my anxiety, etc.
