{"id":1268,"date":"2021-10-27T02:15:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T02:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2021-10-27T02:15:33","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T02:15:33","slug":"that-moment-when-you-cant-hide-it-any-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/2021\/10\/27\/that-moment-when-you-cant-hide-it-any-longer\/","title":{"rendered":"That Moment When You Can’t Hide it Any Longer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I started having chronic health issues around the age of puberty so I never really got a chance at a normal dating life. In fact I felt I had so little to offer I never even tried. Even so I still ended up in one long term romantic relationship with a narcissist that fucked me up way <\/em>more (because now I have a crapton of emotional baggage as well as physical issues. Hooray!) By the time last year came around I was so single, isolated, and lonely I decided to give online dating a shot – met the first guy to contact me and decided that was enough. He was a very genuinely empathetic individual after all and so here we are some year and a half(??) later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a wild ride. And a total mindfuck. It’s really odd how all these inspirational people who stand up for the chronically ill and those coming out of abusive situations tend not to mention how hard being in a non-abusive relationship is. My entire life I have been told by my schooling, my ‘friends’, my ex, and society at large that I am not worth anything. I can’t work so I’m just a drain on society. I can’t ‘act normal’ so I get anger and hostility from people who can. It’s EXHUASTING and it’s hard not to internalize this narrative. Now I am with someone who does value, respect, and love me and…. I don’t know what the fuck to do with that. And sadly, I don’t think he knows what to do with me either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point, I hide almost all my physical issues from just about everyone. My mother, whom I live with, is probably the only one who sees me on bad days when I am crashing. I have made a point to look ‘normal’ at all costs, even it’s fucking killing me. Why? Because that’s what I have learned I need to do… to keep friends, to keep romantic prospects, to function in any way in society. This was probably really <\/em>entrenched into my mind when I got involved with a narcissist who thought my every waking second should be productive <\/em>and complimentary to him in some way. Isn’t it depressing how even years after they’re out of your life they still leave such deep scars on the mind? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here’s the thing… the only reason I could hide my vulnerabilities from my narcissistic ex was because he was never fucking home. I could hold it together on the weekends when he was before crashing HARD on Monday out of sight. This is one of the biggest reasons I don’t want to live with anyone. No one needs to see the dark side of my life – the pain and misery I have to deal with in between all the smiles and normal moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately I have been doing really good. Turns out the reason I was doing soooo poorly <\/em>in the past year was because of all the bullshit I went through with the disability people. Now that they’ve made their decision in my favor and I know I won’t starve to death I am starting to regain function. Who knew stress could be a killer! Ammirite? But just because I am feeling more energetic doesn’t really mean I should be pushing my body. My body really doesn’t respond well when I do… and yet… I was like a rubber band being stretched and finally released. I felt like I was flyyyyying!! Because of this I waaaaay <\/em>overdid it one day when I was visiting my beau. We took a walk and got lost in the woods. It’d be nine and a half miles before we found the car again when just last month I was struggling hard <\/em>with just doing a mile. I felt like death but I still had to drive home. When I got home I sat on the recliner and didn’t move. The trick here was to pretend I could move after this point and my position on said recliner was 100% voluntary. It was not. In fact as the evening progressed a migraine kicked up, my muscles turned to stone, and my stomach started to violently swish back and forth. I was in a lot <\/em>of pain – to the point I passed out. But again, made it look like I did that merely because I was tired, no bigs! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However after my beau’s company left I did have to eventually make it back to the bed. This… was not as easy as it sounds. I was in so much pain by then that I had to hold back not to just scream every time I moved. I hobbled the few steps to the kitchen, announced I was going to bed, hugged him, and very slowly limped off. The stairs were such a challenge that it probably took me a good five minutes to get up that one flight and when I did reach the bed I flopped on it and realized again I was too exhausted to move. At all. Not even to reposition myself. My body was done. <\/em>I haven’t had a crash this aggressive in years – probably because I know not to push it to this point. He came up a few minutes later to tuck me in. Smiled reassuringly and told me to rest. I squeaked out the only words I could, “I’m trying!” before starting to cry where I was. This really alarmed him. I am not one to cry or be dramatic in any way. He didn’t know what to do at this point so he lay down and hugged me for a good ten minutes. I should be happy to be comforted… should actually be comforted by someone who can clearly see I’m struggling rather than one who tells me I’m just making shit up or exaggerating. But I’m not used to that. And everything in me wants to run from that…. wants to slink back into the dark and make sure no one sees me like this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next morning I woke up in better condition but nowhere near truly functional. He asked me to stay an extra day and rest while he was at work and I really should have… but I’m independent to the point of neurosis and I didn’t like this idea of being cared for. I drove him to Wal-Mart that morning and back to his house… missing both the street and then trying to park half a block from his apartment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Are you SURE you’re OK??” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’d asked that and for me to stay four times that morning. He was worried. And he probably should have been. I managed to drive myself home but to be honest I was starting to space out and came really close to parking somewhere to take a nap before going the rest of the way. When I did finally arrive I went to the bathroom, grabbed a snack, and flopped into bed where I would remain for three days before starting to recover. By the time I met him the next week I was merely pathologically fatigued but at least not in any more pain than usual. I was fortunate. Usually a crash that bad can linger for months. But his concern still lingered. Instead of hiking for our date we went to a cemetery to take a nice, slow, short-distance amble. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m a mess. I will always be a mess. So why is I am the last one able to accept this fact? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An intimate look at the reality of how chronic illness alters romantic relationships and how we view ourselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[268,577],"tags":[41,45,709,706,119,712,710,708,182,707,713,711,358],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-living-with-chronic-fatigue-syndrome","category-survivng-a-narcissistic-relationship","tag-chronic-fatigue","tag-chronic-illness","tag-honest","tag-in-a-relationship-with-chronic-illness","tag-invisible-illness","tag-life-lesson","tag-real-life","tag-recovering-from-a-narcissistic-relationship","tag-relationship","tag-relationship-recovery","tag-selfworth","tag-the-ugly-truth","tag-vulnerable","wpcat-268-id","wpcat-577-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/10\/IMG_4440.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paOpxN-ks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theophanesavery.com\/the-boneless-chicken-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}