The hamster wheel

Speaking in chronic pain.

Living with chronic pain that no one you know can truly relate to feels like attempting to communicate through one of those inflatable human hamster balls. You try to convey what’s going on to the normals but they can’t really hear you and you look a bit blurry. They strain their faces to try to make it out but give up quickly—it’s too hard and your blow-up prison makes them uncomfortable. In frustration, you try shouting to get the message out clearer but tumble over instead, hurling yourself back into the upside down.

Everyone leaves to go to pilates, an art show, that cool new restaurant, or to have a child, while you’re stuck there with the blood rushing to your head, wondering if it’ll ever stop. Sometimes people visit but it never feels like they’re really there, their eyes no longer the ones you remember but sunken discs of pity that have the effect of making you want to shut down, to press the off button on another attempt to explain—an attempt to connect with someone who has totally different wiring.

It becomes so painful—this lack of understanding—that you begin to recede into yourself, rolling out of sight to avoid more hollow conversation. When people do stumble upon you and ask how you are, you learn to make a cynical joke and change the subject quickly, to not hover over the answer and risk a disappointing response. Hold music plays in your brain while you talk as a protective measure against too much deep thinking. Your always-heightened awareness and analysis of every situation is now a loud alarm, one you must drown out for survival.

Occasionally, though, someone with real eyes passes by and in them you can see a flicker of recognition, an understanding not of your exact situation but one that’s similarly devastating, another disconnection of body and mind. You roll towards them with a little too much glee, like someone being set free from long-term confinement. Pressed up against the plastic shell you tell them your story, all of it without shame or fear, because something deep in your gut (that signal that you’ll never quite understand but have learned to trust) assures you that they’ll hold it gently, without judgment.

And when they do what you hoped they would do, when your words that have for so long felt garbled actually click and elicit a response that shows they’re not being glossed over with confusion but are deeply felt and understood, you feel your whole body loosen. You’ve found someone who isn’t scared to stare into the gaping hole of your pain but is willing to dive deep into it, swimming through every single complicated layer. For a few minutes, you are out of the hamster wheel. For a few minutes, you can breathe.