I’ve been reading snippets from previous posts and my feeling that my ribs and diaphragm are playing up more seems to be true, not that that helps really in making them better, but it makes me feel better, as I KNOW I am not imagining it. Keeping track of how things change is really difficult, as I have said in the past it’s not just memory. If I had a list of symptoms that I had 10 years ago, I expect that all are still there, which makes it easy on the surface to think things haven’t changed, but they have. In fact I wish I had started to write this 10 years ago as then maybe, I would really know just how much things had progressed and what is totally new or was actually rumbling around in the back ground back then. I know for one that when it comes to talking about my health I am incredibly dismissive about what is really happening to me at that moment, especially I think as Adam is really the only person who is here to see what is happening to me. Last night it was clearly in his voice that he was distressed by what he was watching, all that happened was the level of discomfort and pain in my diaphragm and ribcage, meant that I was finding it almost impossible to locate a position that was comfortable. I kept trying to stretch myself to relieve it both sitting forward and leaning back, but with little to no success. There was nothing Adam could do, he was once again the one distressed by it and I was just doing what I had to, yet again though I dismissed his worry by telling him but reducing in words just how I felt, I was once more dismissing the reality as trivial.

Right or wrong I want to still protect him from the reality of my life, I know he reads all of this, so not talking when the opportunity appears, achieves little as the truth will also appear here. I can find nothing that will be achieved by my telling him at that second just how painful things are, or how uncomfortable my entire body is. I don’t need to put it into words that will make him feel worse or more useless, so I put it into words that dismiss it as trivial and unimportant, just one of those things that happen. There is one impossible thing that I wish I could do and that is remove all the worrying that he does about me, I know he can’t help it, as he says it is “his job to worry”, simply because he loves me. Life is cruel that way, it is so wrong that the pain of one half of a partnership, causes different but equal pain in the other. So we both hover around each other trying to not hurt the other and totally failing. It doesn’t matter what is happening in life, or how much I try to never lie about anything, there is one lie that tumbles out of my mouth with ease and probably will do for ever, “I’m fine”. I think I have also become a reasonable actress, I can’t cover 100% what is happening, but I know I pull of a reasonably good impression of “I’m fine”, even when I am far from it. I can’t talk for others but I have a feeling that nearly everyone who has a chronic illness will equally be able to pull off that act and let the words pass their lips, without the slightest shadow of a lie in their eyes. Love has turned me into a liar and it is now second nature to cover and pretend, as out of love I have to protect those I love from the absolute truth, until I can’t any longer.

Now here comes the really stupid bit, I now find myself acting and reacting to pain when I am alone, just as I do when he is here, it has become so much part of my life that I now do it all the time. I guess it really started when I was still working and out and about in the world, well you can’t sit in your office squealing and screeching at every spasm, so silence is the first thing you learn, then how not to show it in your face and so it goes on. Over the years that act grows and it gets better and better, but when it comes to those we love, we push the act even further. Logic says that if there is one person in the world you can be totally honest with it’s your partner, but they are the ones you want to protect the most. You have to keep that act going when they are anywhere in the house, you never know when they might be close enough to hear the whimper, or they might just enter the room, so we protect them even when not there.

You never think when you become ill just what is ahead of you, yes you think about all the different types of pain, the memory and other brain issues, you worry about how you will cope and if you can really manage to live like that. I remember worrying about the effect of it on Adam, but not in this way, my worries were based round the impact of loosing the life we thought we would have together and the eventual situation of him one day having to care for me. I don’t remember ever thinking about the possibility of my having or wanting to protect him, from what was really happening to me. I see no reason for anyone to sit there and tell those around them just what is happening at that second and to update it through out the day, what would it achieve? He has enough ahead of him thanks to my health, without having a daily complaints list, I love him too much to put even more on his shoulders than is already there. So now I have written this I need to add just one more thing, Adam please trust me, if I really thought there was something terribly wrong, something that you needed to know about, I honestly would tell you.