Tea & Whiskers: The Places Pain Sends Us Back To

In about a month, I’ll be returning to a path I forsook. As someone who has been on the chronic pain, fibro journey for some time now, I have been up and down and all around many pathways to try and find some way to dampen or relieve the pain just so I can have some normalcy.

Just so I can do housework, or enjoy a family outing, or attend church – or – you know….make friends.

Nothing has really worked.

But a sense of desperation settled over me this past year. Or perhaps a sense of deep, unbearable longing for what-could-have-been.

I found myself crying hysterically in the doctor’s office, admitting that my pain was approaching unbearable levels some days. Admittedly, there was nothing my GP could do but be sympathetic, and sign me up for the Pain Clinic, a place I promised I would never return to.

It’s still very clear in my mind, the day I walked into the Pain Clinic at Flinders. I was in my early twenties, and I immediately felt unsettled. The walls were rotting and peeling, and I felt squished and oppressed from the low ceilings and tight spaces. It was as though everything about the corridors and waiting area was designed to be as uncomfortable as some post-modernist Foucauldian institution.

My mother came with me, and she attended the interview with me. Together, we entered the office of the psychiatrist on staff who would oversee my diagnosis. I was on edge—I’ll be honest, I don’t like psychologists, psychiatrists—and I especially don’t like them when they sit in disorganised, pokey little offices that remind me of some Soviet-era detention centre, seeping in neglect and quiet menace.

I know that I looked to my mother to help answer many of his questions. I know that I turned to her to speak for me. This had been something that had been the normalcy for my entire life. I was just a young adult who was finding herself overwhelmed and dysregulated, and struggling so hard to articulate my pain (my parents had only just managed to figure out that I was in pain, because I’d been using the wrong words to explain my symptoms for years.) So, of course I needed someone to help translate the world for me. (Let’s not even mention, I didn’t know I was hard-of-hearing yet.)

My mother, though, she is really good at this jargon stuff, and considering she has a bachelor's degree in Behavioral Science, I always thought she had a far better grasp of such areas.

Yet I suppose this positive mother-daughter dynamic must have been something unusual for this man to witness, because out of that hour interview—barely knowing me at all—he declared that my chronic pain was due to an emotional attachment to my mother. He constructed a story, a story of enmeshment, that had more to do with his stupid-lame assumptions than with my reality.

Basically.

I wanted attention.

My mother was furious. She was so insulted.

And I was just…ashamed.

Has no one ever seen a positive, good mother-daughter relationship before? I was so confused. I had just spent an hour being honest, and open about my amazing, wonderful parents and my incredible siblings and had it spat back in my face that somehow this was a negative. It was a negative that I had a caring, supportive family. I had come to the Pain Clinic seeking help, help to be able to expand my horizons, to find a pathway out of my pain so I could boldly go forth into the world like I wanted. I wanted to get out there and experience the world, find a husband, have kids and live my life. I just needed some help with my chronic pain. But instead, I was condemned.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother and I have been through a lot together. I was not an easy child. My mother, my father, my siblings, they showed such tremendous love and acceptance that allowed me to become the woman I am today. I would not be here without the patience and kindness they have gifted me. To insult that foundational, unconditional love, to turn it against us, to tell me that I was abusing that relationship, was disgusting.

This encounter with this doctor at the Pain Clinic was devastating to me. It took me years to overcome it. To stop myself from second guessing my own mind, from wondering if I was actually a horrible, disgusting, vile daughter. I mean, that must have been what he saw, right? Was that what others saw?

The shame was crippling. I loathed getting any support from my family, because—well—I didn’t deserve it, did I.

It broke me.

And I suppose, a part of me hasn’t really gotten over it, because the thought of going back to the Pain Clinic is utterly terrifying, and now that it’s a month away, I’m considering cancelling the whole thing because I just don’t want to be treated that way again.  

I just want the pain gone. I want to be able to live a pain-free life. I want to be able to do yard work, and the dishes, and go out to the city to play Dungeons and Dragons.

I will probably end up going.

The other night, after I expressed my fears to my Dad he sent me a Bible verse.

Isaiah 41:10 KJV

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

I am not fearless, but I do know, wholeheartedly, that my strength comes entirely from God.

My mother also told me that I cannot allow a single man's judgement and assessment of me to dictate my path forward, and she's entirely right. That's allowing one person to much control over me and my thoughts and my life and that's all sort of ridiculous.

So, I will step forward in trust and hope, and see what this door opens.