IBS has been pretty bad lately. The past week has included: perhaps one hour of fairly intense pain, at least six or seven hours of fair to moderate levels of discomfort, intransigent constipation on at least a couple of days, plus the usual bizarre intestinal feelings such as spasms and weird stuff.
And this is one week of my life, 15 years after first having IBS symptoms. Fifteen years later I still have to struggle and crawl and battle through my life instead of living it.
And the world somehow expects me to do just that. It always feels like whatever pain I am feeling or whatever is wrong with my body, the rest of the world blithely expects me to just carry on, just get on with it. That peculiar kind of British wartime mentality that said we don’t care if you’ve got a bayonet embedded in your spine, you’re to carry on living and not complain.
I swear to God if someone once said to me “Dear God, I can’t believe the amount of suffering you’ve been through, you deserve a medal” I would be pathetically grateful. But no-one ever does. They just expect me to turn up or earn money or be happy and then are totally bemused when I am not.
I’ve had a stomach ache for 15 years, I have to spend hours in the bathroom, I can’t eat hardly anything without feeling ill, I can’t travel, and sometimes it feels like someone is stabbing me in the side with a lance.
Yes, but why are you crying?
Sophie,
I can understand you completely, you have my full sympathy, and I particularly understand how frustrating it is not only to suffer from those dreadful symptoms ALL THE TIME, but at the same time having to do as if nothing, because nobody who hasn’t experienced the same will ever know how bad it makes you feel… I’m so depressed right now that I’m happier asleep than awake and wish I could just sleep and dream forever with no malicious belly torturing me…