The Kind of Pain Others Can’t See

 From the time I was a youngster and well into my adult life, I carried a kind of pain that no one could see.

Emotional pain.

As an adult, I became very good at disguising it.

Even the people closest to me had no idea how much I was suffering internally.

I could smile.

I could take care of things.

From the outside, everything looked good.

But inside, there was a very different story.

It wasn’t until I came into recovery that I began to reveal those hidden parts of myself.

Little by little, I started telling the truth.

I began doing the healing work.

I began allowing myself to feel the things I had spent years trying not to feel.

And then, fairly early in my recovery, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

At the time, I had no idea what that meant.

It took years before I really began to understand my experience with it.

Once again, I was living with a kind of pain that other people couldn’t see.

But this time, I wasn’t hiding it.

I talked about it.

I acknowledged it.

And yet, initially, there was still some shame.

There was something about having an illness that other people couldn’t see that made me question myself.

Could people really understand how I felt?

Would they believe me?

Was I somehow supposed to be stronger?

Looking back, I can see the irony.

I had spent years hiding emotional pain because no one could see it.

Then I had physical pain that no one could see.

Different pain.

But both taught me something about what it means to live with an experience that exists inside you, even when the outside world can’t see it.

Maybe that is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned:

Just because pain can’t be seen doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

And just because someone else can’t see what I’m carrying doesn’t mean I have to carry it alone.

And a good reminder that we never know what somebody else is going through either.