Suffering, undergoing, aching, agonizing, braving, bearing, languishing. Battling, fighting, challenging, resisting, grappling, wrangling, wrestling. Yeah, I just pulled out my thesaurus, but it isn't any less true.It's funny because when someone has an acute illness, there are things to do. If you get a cold, for example, everyone has a bit of advice. Drink more water (apparently, this cures everything). Rest as much as possible. Take some vitamins. Take a long hot shower. Use this or that device. I suppose these things must be effective to an extent, but the real battle, the one between the invading pathogens and your home cells, is one that you have very little control over. Sure, there are things you can do to aid your immune system. The biggest thing you can do is just to wait.
Waiting to get better is a trial. I wonder if the term, "suffering from an illness" comes from the business of being uncomfortable while your body doesn't function optimally or from the agony of waiting while knowing you can't do anything. Certainly there are illnesses where one does suffer with a physical intensity that is apt for the term, but "suffering" implies a level of anguish that the common cold generally doesn't bring.
It probably sounds like I've come here to rant about diction like I may or may not have done in the past. Words matter, folks. Whether you were teased or assaulted matters. Whether you lost or were defeated matters. Whether you were annoyed or were pestered matters. But today I really just want to explain that neither suffering nor fighting are really great words for chronic illness.
If you weren't already aware, I have chronic nerve pain. Not sure where it came from, but it's here. I have reason to believe that I had clinical depression before the first symptoms of a dysfunctional nervous system ever came into play, but the two certainly don't work together to make me feel better. As I write this, I'm in the process of switching from a tricylic antidepressant to an SSRI, and it's a bit of a difficult journey. I finally feel like I have the right to complain about antidepressants online because I've now tried three of them, and I'm no closer to feeling better. But anyone who has taken a similar journey knows that it's common for antidepressants to take time, so you just kind of deal with it.
In this process, I've been trying to come up with words for what I'm going through. If you've read the preceding paragraphs (as I suspect most of you have), you will guess that "suffering" and "battling" do not make it onto my list of "helpful words" in this case. See, we like words like "battling" because it gives us a sense of control in an otherwise intangible setting. It makes us feel brave and powerful and hopeful. But it isn't true. Not in a literal sense anyway. Because while you can battle a cold and probably win, chronic illness is here for the long game. Any day that you do everything right still has a chance of being a losing day. Every day that could be described as a victory can easily be followed by insurmountable odds the next morning. Sometimes battles are short, but then there are the times that they stretch on for days and weeks and months with no hope of a reprieve.
That's where the suffering comes in. But we don't like to suffer. We don't like to be in a world where we have no control and pain and difficulty are completely out of our hands. We try to fight, but how do you fight your own body? How do you fight the inevitable? How do you endure the agony of knowing that you'll never get better? If you aren't already clinically depressed, it's going to be easy to become so.
Maybe I do suffer from chronic illness. Maybe I do suffer from depression. Maybe "suffering" is an apt word after all. But if I accept that, then what's the point? I can't get better. I can't take control. I can't do anything at all except be.
A nurse once told me to stop saying, "I am depressed" or "I am ill" but instead say, "I have depression" and "I have a chronic illness." And this difference matters. Like any word choice, this one matters.
But saying that I have depression makes it sound like this condition is an unwelcome birthday gift from Aunt Judy that I might be able to stuff in the back closet and forget about or hand off to someone else. It doesn't speak to the days that I have no energy to get out of bed. When smiling hurts. When caring is impossible. It doesn't speak to the ways that I have grown up with depression and physical pain. About how these things have shaped me, taught me, and helped me become myself.
See, my pain isn't going away. My mental illness isn't going away. And even if it did, I don't really know who I would be. The suffering speaks to the fact that my days are more difficult than they would be if I weren't ill. The fighting speaks to how I strive to live fully every day, even though I won't get better. But I can't bring myself to use those terms to describe myself. I simply am. I am a mixture of joy and sorrow, pain and freedom, grace and awkwardness, certainty and anxiety, and so many other components. I don't know if the mixture is just right, but for one day at a time, I just live. I just am.
I take medication. This is designed to help me function despite how I am. It doesn't change who I am, though. It doesn't make it possible to wait it out, to hope I get better, to look on the bright side, or to reassure me that I'll make it through. There is no other side. This isn't an obstacle I can overcome. It's a hard reality that I live in every day, and that I will continue to live in every day of my life. Other than a miracle or death, there is no known cure. I'll spend the rest of my life dealing with the symptoms. There will be days when it's a fight, and there will be days when I suffer.
There are people in my life who get that, and who aren't offended when I have a panic attack and flake out on our social gatherings. But for those of you who aren't in that group, hey, it's okay, I get it. But just know that even if I'm not "fighting" or if I don't appear to be "suffering," I'm no less of a person. I'm not out on a vacation until I get better. I won't be getting better, but I'm still pretty cool.
