There’s a quote by John Green from one of his books that says, “That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” I have yet to find another quote that so accurately describes my life. No matter what I’m doing, my pain demands to be acknowledged and throughly felt.

It was nearly 2 am when I started writing this because my pain was preventing me from sleeping. For those who don’t know, I have had chronic pain in my foot and ankle for about a year now. Just a few days ago I started having new pains in my hip and groin. It sort of feels like someone stabbed my in my groin with a searing hot knife and just kinda left it there. The pain doesn’t go away but the intensity will come and go. The only thing I can do to not increase my pain is lay in bed on my left side. That means that standing, walking, and sitting all put me in incredible amounts of pain. The pain got so bad one day that I really contemplated going to the ER, and I hate hospitals more than anything.

But through all of this, I still have to manage school. Its pretty difficult to actually listen to a lecture when sitting makes the pain scream at you. Its also pretty difficult to do homework when all you can concentrate on is how fucking bad you hurt. Writing this post has been difficult because I have to sit up in order to type.

I thought about skipping my classes one day this week to see if maybe if I rested the whole day maybe my pain wouldn’t be unbearable at night like it has been. But when I talked to my mom about this she said that I should push through it. Sometimes I think this is what the whole world expects of me. They expect that I still take a shower every day, that I still attempt to go to school and work, that I attempt to regain control over the pain.

I wanted this post to still be an argument about disability politics originally but my pain has been so intense that I thought it would be best to vent the pain and share with people a glimpse at the unglamorous side of disability.