can i go to bed yet?

I’m tired of having to explain everything to people that don’t need to know everything about my health, just so I can be taken seriously. I feel like if I don’t go all out and give this long explanation they won’t believe me and think I’m making it up. Why would anyone believe that I go through random cycles of excruciating pain that forces me to say home in bed for unknown periods of time? 

Drowning in schoolwork. 

Drowning in my mind from pain and fatigue. 

My birthday is Saturday and the existential dread is seeping in again. 

I don’t feel like myself and I don’t know what to do to change that. Everyone I’m close to feels too close and yet so distant.

I go back to see the doctor at Hopkins next week, not quite sure what to expect.

Since we’ve been dating, I’ve had several doctor’s appointments and medication changes and been in moderate amounts of pain while hardly sleeping more than 4 hours a night, no matter how hard I try and how tired I am. Yesterday was a bit worse of a day than I have been having due to lack of sleep, on-and-off low grade fevers, and generalized muscle and joint pain. We work together and I had texted him something about how I thought I had a fever and wished I could just take a nap and sleep it off (oh the irony - as if I could sleep). 

His response to me was that I should take the rest of the day off and relax in his apartment (which is across the street from our university/work). I told him I felt weird being in his apartment by myself (plus his roommate could come home whenever and see me there just chillin - even though we’re friends it’s still weird) and he said he would take the day with me, if it means I’ll relax and maybe get some rest. 

I was shocked at his response. I told him I’d be fine to make it to the end of the day since we weren’t doing much and that I’d rather be here to continue to make money even if it means I’m uncomfortable. Plus I don’t want him to not make money just to sit with me because I’m not feeling well. He told me “it’s just money.” I ended up talking him (and my sister who happens to be my boss) down enough that I could stay the rest of the day at work. 

This boy. He was going to willingly leave work for half the day to sit with me in his apartment so I could get some rest. Not understanding that this is nothing compared to what I went through just a few months ago. 

When I first told him I wasn’t feeling well, he told me that I should have just stayed home like he told me to on Sunday. Eventually, I explained to him that since I’m always in pain, I like to try to go to the things I need to and understand that I can always leave early if it’s too much. And since I’m constantly in pain, it’s hard to pick and choose what days I would stay home and what days I would go out, as most times there’s hardly and difference in the pain level when I wake up. 

He was in shock at how much thought I had put into this. My response was simply that this is my life, and I don’t have a choice but to put this much thought into it.