I experience pain. I didn't realize how much until recently, or maybe I forgot. I tend to avoid things. For example, I stutter. It's usually not a problem because I replace words I stutter on with synonyms or close-enough words; it gets complicated with proper nouns, which is when I notice the stutter, other times I forget I even have one. I guess I learned to do the same with this. Anything that hurt me, I avoided; whether it was sitting a certain way, walking a certain way, moving in a certain way, putting pressure on certain body parts, etc. I feel the pain when I absolutely have to move in certain ways. But lately it's been hurting more. Not as much as during the various doctor visits, though.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I haven't had people telling me how to position my body or positioning my body for me. I noticed the pain a lot at my first competent doctor visit about a month ago, then noticed it even more by the rheumotologist, then by physical therapy and the x-rays.
Every single one of those doctors have asked me why I didn't notice the pain until now. Well, I did notice. In the beginning I assumed it was normal, so I just dealt it and avoided certain positions. And when I realized it wasn't normal, all the doctors said nothing was wrong.
Why did I think it was normal?
Well, a few reasons. I had no friends in real life, so I had no one to compare pain to. I never saw my online friends moving, so I didn't know that not everyone is always in pain.
Another reason is that I was very naive once upon a time ago. I assumed that everyone was in pain because people would always want the comfortable chair, run to get a seat on the bus, rushed to get inside the elevator, etc.. Instead of thinking "Wow, these people are lazy and spoiled", I just assumed their feet hurt so they didn't to sit down, their back hurt so they needed a comfortable chair and they rushed to get inside the elevator first because they couldn't take the stairs and standing around for too long hurt them as well.
While that might have been true for some people, that could not have possibly applied to almost everyone I've ever seen before.
The only thing that kept me going was my assumption that my experiences and pain were normal. And now even the doctors are acting like I'm some freak.
As I mentioned before, is it really so hard to believe that nothing got done about this before, or that when I finally did notice, no one believed me? I always knew something was wrong, something was different. I always felt like a freak. People treated me like one. I remember writing in a journal when I was 12, at a horror movie convention, that this is the only place feel normal and safe; everywhere else I feel like I don't fit in or that I'm some circus freak. People always treated me like that. But now the doctors too?
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