In a week or two I am going to sit down with a nice lady who is going to teach me how to talk to myself differently. Talk to myself in a way that I value who I am. A bit before that I am going to see a Specialist Doctor about the chronic joint pain I have been experiencing for about two years now. I have waited three months to see the lady and six months to see the specialist.

I am scared. Not scared of meeting them or how they will be but that I will do what I always do. Cover it up with laughter, hide the full extent of how much mental and physical pain I have been going through. I do this a lot because people don't know how to deal with it when I show them the raw emotion below the mask. 

I get tired of reassuring them that the "fix" they have suggested is something I have tried or that it physically cannot work. I get tired of their faces dropping as they say "You seemed to be doing so much better." That one always make me feel like a failure even though I know it is meant as a kindness.

All these reactions are layered with my mental saboteur telling me that I am complaining about nothing in the first place.

Even when I recognise I am in pain that same asshole part of me will chime in about how it is not as bad as my other friends who are depressed, who are grieving, who suffer from their own chronic pain. But it isn't a competition. And even if it was I wouldn't want to be the winner in that game.

At these times when I cry to myself about it all I take the time to tell myself this is real. That people need to know so I can get help and that however slowly it may take to get there I am trying to change. To get help so that I am no longer in pain. So that I can think straight and then I can worry more about everyone else again.