Hi Ladies!
I hope you are ALL having a pain free day today!

I wrote this in my journal but Rebel7 said it would be a good idea to put it up here for you all, as it is how most of us feel. I know there is one circulating around but I guess this is my version of it. I know you all or most of you would be able to relate. Feel free to take bits from it and give it to people you feel fit. Sometimes there's a mountain of people I'd have read this!

Love to you all =) *hugs*

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This disease is torturous, not only to me but to the people I love.

I have to put up with people not understanding - those people utterly annoy me, frustrate and anger me. YES I do hurt, YES it does stop me from being me, going out, having fun! YES, I do love to go out, party, enjoy myself but I am not sorry to you for what this disease does to me, giving me the inability to not be who I am, because it's not my fault! If I had cancer, if I was dieing, you'd be terribly compassionate, do I need a death sentence for you to care...or, is it only with a death sentence that you pretend to care?

I have a wonderful partner who I cannot believe I am blessed enough to have. He does everything for me, and I don't mean just look after me. He takes on all the workload I do when I am not well, he takes days off to care for me, and he is willing to not have fun just to look after me. It hasn't been easy, it's taken a lot for us to get here...he wasn't always this way, but he has taken the time to learn that what I am going through can be as painful as I am telling him it is. He has seen the pictures, seen the doctors, seen the info. He's watched what he does to me, and now we are at a stage where he realises I don't want to be this way, it depresses me, and he does everything to be my rock.

I have wonderful parents who would drop everything to come to me, to loan me money if I need it for appointments, to just 'help out'. You know it's even taken them years to get to this point. So Kudos to my partner for getting there early.

This isnt who I am, this disease doesn't define me. Its just changing me, I don't like it and I will fight it. But some days you know, I just can't. Some days I just give in, because I am exhausted. I could have travelled somewhere amazing with the money I have spent on doctors over the years. Instead Im still battling my health. Sometimes it IS hard. I am glad I have amazing people around me, and oneday I hope to do something amazing for them in return.

I'll never be 100% but I plan to be better, I will fight for it. I will be positive, and I will make a change in myself. But I won't ever be sorry, because this is something I did not ask for, or plan for. I will not be sorry because it is not my fault. I will not be sorry to those intolerable people who think I make things unpleasant for them, or I am a burden, or I am 'always sick' well I hate to tell you, I don't get time off from this disease, I don't get to pick when it will hurt me, or for how long or for how much, I have no say, and you either accept me as the person I am, or I don't need you around. I try really hard to participate in life, but sometimes I can't. I don't need your demeaning attitudes, your degrading looks, your dissapointment. I am amazing, I just have something inside me I can't control.

If you're my friend, my family, you will accept me, the way I have had to accept myself. It isn't easy, but I know I am worth it. And, the people who matter to me know it as well.