Uncertainty of Chronic Pain
I don’t know is one of the most honest things I can often tell myself. Hopes and dreams for next year, next five years, I don’t know. Playing out the hand chronic pain deals means living without certainty, and that may be the hardest part. Most individuals with their illusions their body can never fail them, see only a predictable path ahead of them on their journey through life. However, the chronically ill body does not possess that same level of certainty. This body no longer makes promises it can keep. You don’t know how you will feel when you wake up, whether plans will hold, or if a good day will unravel by afternoon. Over time you learn that certainty was always a fragile illusion, but pain makes that truth impossible to ignore. There is grief in that realization, and also a strange invitation. Without certainty, you begin to live closer to the present moment because it is the only place that is real. In other words, you aren’t looking further down the road, because you know you can’t, so you find yourself examining exactly where you are in this moment. You learn to build a life that can flex, to anchor yourself in values rather than outcomes, to measure a day not by productivity but by presence. We care conditioned and trained to view productivity as the highest sense of worth in this society, but we were taught this, rather than it being a given universal truth. With this awareness, we have the ability to engage our free will and scrape together what we choose to focus on and caretake. Chronic pain strips away the fantasy of control, yet it can deepen courage or at least show you that you possess more courage than you’re telling yourself. Yes, sadness can be extremely heavy, but do you ever recognize your strength in your ability to carry it? You show up anyway, despite the load on your back and the ball and chain you’re dragging along from one day to the next. You love anyway. You create meaning anyway. And in that willingness to live fully without guarantees, there is a strength that pain can never fully take. If you wish to explore this strength within you, reach out and contact me.
Dr. Jeffrey Bone