The story of Mai
What can be worse than waking up every day with the pain of having to get out of bed and dressed. I don’t mean about the part when you have to open your eyes and break your sleep but I’m talking about the part when you pull yourself together and stand up on the ground when you are diagnosed with arthritis. Better yet, what’s worse than feeling your feet tingle at all times as if you walk on broken glass with every step you take? Or that dilemma to ask for help and suck my ego in or fight hard, tolerate the pain and get out of bed myself. Those days when I manage to get out of bed, I have to survive the pain of getting dressed. I feel my knee joints rub against each another as I lift my leg to wear my pants. The sound of my hips click as I lift my legs up accompanies the feeling of dry pain and I sit back catching my breath. I walk like a penguin. In the beginning it sounds funny and sarcastic but in reality it feels agonizing especially if I’ve been sitting for a long time. As I stand up I feel how swollen my knees are and how my feet hurt terribly. All I could do at this point in time is breathe and look at the sky asking God why? Why does it hurt so badly?
When I look around I find people, my friends and family complaining about many things and everything, within myself I say “if you would just feel what I feel, you would never complain again”. It hurts, I suck it all up but it hurts that at time I lose the sense of control to how much of an angle my knees can bend or straighten in position. I remind myself over and over that I’m still better than many others, that I’m better than those people who starve in famines or those who have no homes to live in, but deep down it hurts that I’ m just 18 and having fibromyalgia.