About living with fibromyalgia

So many people say to me how they would never know that I struggle with fibromyalgia. That I always manage to put on a "happy-go-lucky" front. And don't get me wrong - most of the time I am happy and enjoying my life but I also have to cope with pain and have been doing so for 12 years - and I'm only 26.

Every morning I wake up in a considerable amount of pain, by mid-morning my legs will feel numb and sometimes I'll have a burning pain. Some days, that's as far as I'll get but others, when I'm particularly tired or stressed, I can get to the end of the day and be in agony - unable to do anything but lie on the sofa and pray that my pain will go away.

Most days I can manage this, I've accepted that chronic pain is a part of my life and that I just need to learn to live with it. Others, life doesn't seem fair. There is no respite, no break and sometimes that can become all too much.

I spend about an hour awake in total each night, tossing and turning as my brain signals wake my body up - leaving me incredibly tired before I've even started to manage my pain the next day.

In spite of this, I do live with fibromyalgia. I have done so many amazing things and feel so fortunate to have had the experiences that I have had despite my pain. I have lived in Spain for a year, travelled Europe, learned to ski, ran a half marathon and climbed a volcano to name a few.

There are so many things that fibromyalgia has taught me. It has made me far more determined to achieve my dreams because sometimes I'm fighting my own body to achieve them. It has taught me to accept and love the body that I am in, for all of its faults. It has taught me that exercise and all the things I love to do might actually be able to ease my pain, both mentally and physically. It has also taught me that family and friends are the most important thing in life - I would not be able to get through each day without them.

"How is it so easy for you to be kind to people, he asked. Milk and honey dropped from my lips as I answered, because people have not been kind to me". This is one of my favourite Rupi Kaur poems and I believe that I am kind to people because I know what it is like to have struggles that people can't really see. I write this blog to raise awareness of chronic and invisible illnesses and to encourage people to be kind, always, because you don't know what people are going through.