“Don't be so sensitive.”

“Don't be so sensitive.”

I must have had this said to me a hundred thousand times in my life. It was a recrimination, an accusation. A declaration that I am the problem. The thing is I found a few ways. I found alcohol at a pretty young age. I wasn't a fan of drunk, but numb, oh I liked that. I also just avoided people. Books were pretty good for numbing too. Whole other worlds where I was someone else. Animals and outside were pretty good too. Yet it never fixed the problem, me.

I was super sensitive, I am super sensitive to everything.

You see about two weeks ago now, just before my 40^th birthday a doctor I was sure was going to tell me I needed surgery on my knee told me I have fibromyalgia. Don't be so sensitive, it takes on a whole new meaning. I have all this weird. Not the pain, that made sense to me. The itchiness, the figdetiness, the can't be in that shop because of the way it smells, the way I shop with my hands because very few textures feel right against my skin. My pathological hatred of scratchy labels. My love of old clothes. Things worn soft, or that smell right like old huge leather jackets. My love/hate relationship with shoes. I love them but they are torture to wear. I spent as much time barefoot and naked as a child as I could. I still do. I have a sense of smell like a bloodhound. It can be so intense something simple like a wet newspaper can make me sick. Of course these things were explained away, I was just too sensitive.

I have now listened to quite a few people describe how it feels. All and none of which are right to me.

This image is how I feel almost all the time. Like I have these tender spiralling tendrils reaching out from my body. I can feel the air pressure change. I can feel the temperature drop outside. I can feel the moon. I can smell and taste and feel far beyond what is normal. Sometimes it is overwhelming. It is quite often excruciatingly painful and it is exhausting trying to stay in a human shape. I still try not to be so sensitive.

I mask a lot. I put perfume on my gloves and scarfs so I can breathe this controlled smell rather than the taxi drivers hair. I listen to music or the sound of the ocean to drown out the other sounds, from traffic to my neighbours. I wear crystals, or carry prayer beads as much to focus my sense of touch as much as their other benefits.

I don't like swimming in pools with lots of other people, the water intensifies everything, as much as I love the water on my skin. I tolerate baths but I can never get comfortable, it isn't soothing. It feels like a wet coffin I get clean in. Much of my firbromyalgianess that isn't pain (and even that on occasion) has been seen as my person failing so often I believed it. That feels quite intense. It feels like I am finally seeing my whole life through this lens. 

In fact I was told as a child there was no such thing as pain, and if I felt it I had made it (martial arts can be a funny thing). Again feeling and more especially showing pain or weakness was bad, a failure. I fractured my collarbone as an 8 year old child and only the next day was I taken to hospital. 

How do I learn to acknowledge my pain and not drown in it? How do I learn to stop minimising my experience? How to accept help, when I can't walk or even stand?

How do I learn to be the fibro warrior witch?