The voice of pain

So, lying in bed just now on Christmas night, I have just realized why pain is so scary.  It makes me feel unlovable.  It makes me feel ugly and lonely.  It makes me feel isolated and unworthy of goodness.  None of those feelings are valid.  None of the statements true.  But, even though I was in touch with many people who love me today, I lay there feeling utterly lonesome and forgotten.  The pain has a voice of some sort that separates me from the rest of the human race.  I am different.  I am so different as to be not understood by anyone.  It feels like I am a soldier who has fallen behind enemy lines and I'm being fed propaganda by my body about myself.  I'm not bad or deserving of this.  I begin to think along those lines though, even though I know that is not the truth. 

Tonight's symptoms are severe and due to about 3 issues.  First, it is snowing out.  Clearly I can't control that.  Second, my blood is surging with hormones.  Also, uncontrollable.  And third, and this one makes me mad, the turkey I made for Christmas dinner had MSG in it.   I had two servings of it today and haven't had a migraine this severe for over 2 months, the duration of my diet change.   I'm bitter that our food supply has these chemicals in it that make me sick.  What the heck?  I'd be healthier if I lived in some other era before all the available food was tainted with "natural flavors".  Of course, since I require air conditioning, I couldn't easily make it in any of those eras and, it is empty wishing anyway.  I live now.  I just hate that I am so vulnerable to crap.  I feel abnormal.  Thinking of the millions of people who ate a holiday meal today and did not get sick from the chemicals in it.  About 87 flavors of unfair. 

Trying to focus on the blessings and the positive, I go down the very long list of what I have to be super grateful for.  These symptoms this evening will wane.  I am frustrated right now because I can't find relief.  I am in too much pain to sleep and there is nothing to take for the migraine.  So, I'm just stuck.  And it is a lonely feeling.  No one else even knows I'm in this much pain.  Why should they?  It is not theirs.  It is mine.  So, I will try to bear the burden tonight.  I will try to pray some more but, it is very hard to concentrate. 

Remind myself to only think the truth.  What is true?  I am very loved, very valuable, admired, appreciated, and important to a lot of people.  I am capable of handling tonight's dose of symptoms.  I have done it before.  They are temporary.  This is not bigger than me.  I know from my own historical data that I can successfully endure before I finally fall asleep without losing my mind.  Also true is that I'm sensitive to everything.  Not vulnerable.  And I am not lonely.  Also, I think I am not more different than other individuals are from each other.  So many people struggle with so much.  I have a health struggle.  I am not a closet kleptomaniac.  I'm not worried about my minimum wage job.  I'm not eaten up with jealousy.  Not having an affair in order to feel something.  Etc.  A lot of people struggle.  Mine is physical.  If that was all, it would be easier.  But, pain's voice is toxic.  Trying to get me to believe untruths.  Wicked, wicked pain. 

I hope someday our food supply is free of chemicals that make people sick.  I pray for it.