“They Won’t Believe Me”

I wanna talk about the voice inside my head. I wanna talk about it because I know that other people hear a similar voice and feel a similar way.

When you’re sick, people expect you to look and/or act sick. They expect that when you have the flu, you’re in bed with a lot of fluids and some chicken soup; when you have cancer that you’re bald and they need to walk on eggshells around you; and that when you have a chronic illness, you look tired and feel ill 24/7.

But that isn’t the case, is it? At least not all of the time.

There are different kinds of flu, cancer, and chronic illness, and there are different stages of each. AND, every person handles things differently, both physically and mentally.

It drives us (people with a chronic illness) absolutely NUTS when we hear people say “you don’t look sick” because, really, it doesn’t make much sense. There are people all around the world that are struggling with something and you wouldn’t even know it unless they were wearing a sign. And then you probably wouldn’t believe the sign if their actions and appearance didn’t exactly match the image in your brain.

Unfortunately, I also have that same kind of doubt.

What other people have put upon me, I have now put upon myself.

And it’s absolutely toxic.

Instead of “you don’t look sick”, it’s become “I don’t look sick”. And while that might seem fantastic, it’s not always a great feeling. Weird, right?

See… I now have it in my head that if I don’t look sick enough, people won’t believe that my illness is real, or that it isn’t as severe as I make it seem.

Iv’e become scared that if I look like I’m having even an ounce of fun, people won’t believe that my pain is really that bad. That if [when] I’m successful, I must have been faking or embellishing it.

These are the toxic thoughts that haunt my mind.

I try not to act on, or, rather, drown in, these thoughts. Though sometimes I do catch myself thinking something like: “I can’t post this picture because I posted one of a flare the other day. If I post both, people won’t believe me”. Or, “I can’t [insert thing to do] because I recently said I wasn’t feeling well, so if I do [the thing] then people won’t believe me because I got “better” too quickly”.

And maybe it’s because of the years and YEARS of doctors, friends, and family questioning me? I don’t really know. But I suspect the fear of people not believing me stems from … people not believing me.

It’s become a fear of losing credibility.

It’s taken a lot of hard work and a total mental renovation to do things in spite of the fear. And I’d like to share the main thing that’s helped me with anyone who reads this: perspective.

Instead of focusing on the negative, I try to focus on the positive.

Though my mind absolutely goes to a place of “what I can’t do”, I’m bitch-slapping it into a place of “what I can do”. I want to focus on the fun I can have and what I can accomplish in spite of my chronic illness, not all of things that are difficult about it. I sank into an “I can’t do much” vibe for about 4 years, and it isn’t a good vibe to be in. It’s dangerous.

I can’t fully describe what this feels like, which seems to be trend with endometriosis. Unless you experience it, you don’t really understand what I’m talking about!

I want people to see what’s possible to overcome. Yet the fear of being discredited still exists.

I know that there are cynical and annoying people out there who are going to look at my life and think that endometriosis must be a load of crap because I still do things and have a good life. And I’m not just talking about social media, people form these same opinions when they are seeing certain behaviours in-person.

To be totally honest, though I’ve found ways to handle the fear and to do things in spite of it, it lives on and I have no clue how to make it go away. Maybe there is no way.

I feel a constant battle between what I want and what I’m afraid of.

 Thank you for reading<3

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