Pain

I live with chronic pain.

I am a migraine sufferer

I also have (depending on which doctor you ask) occipital neuralgia

or some other strange problem with the nerves in my head.

Both of these things rule my life.

I think it must be very hard to live with a person like me

A person who regularly lies on the couch and moans.

A person who often can't go out or make dinner or be normal or be any fun at all.

Certainly it is hard to BE me sometimes.

Certainly this isn't the person I had planned to be when I imagined my future.

I want to be fun

I want to be active

I want to smile

Sometimes I try to fake it

tell myself that if I just act like everything is ok, then it will be

but most of the time, I just give in to it.

I analyze the pain as I endure it.

I talk about it.

I can't seem to stop myself from talking about it.

Like it needs to escape my head

like the releasing of the words will somehow affect the pressure building

and give me some relief.

I'm sure that my family would prefer I would suffer in silence

and fake it

Even I get sick of hearing myself so I'm sure they do.

Oh really, another headache?  How surprising.

.

Frank actually handles me quite well

He manages, somehow, to show compassion for me after 25 years of hearing me say

my head hurts

But to say my head hurts does not describe what I am going through

Not even close.

I see my face getting lines 

frown lines

and I wonder if its from all the hours spend laying on a couch or a bed 

grimacing

My husband travels a fair amount for work
and I admit that I have thought more than once that Frank is better in writing than he is in person
Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy in person!
But when he goes on a business trip we trade emails and texts and he does such a good job of sending me nice messages
he sounds so loving and like he really misses me
then when he comes home, we fall right back into our normal rhythms
and its all so...normal
It's kind of a let down.
But today I realized that my real life self compared
 to my text/email self must be an even bigger let down to him
In writing I can put exclamation points or smiley faces
and I seem so happy and energetic
then he comes home, and realizes that I am that same sad girl on the couch saying
my head hurts.