I started having fibromyalgia symptoms at the age of 5, so when I hit 30 (April 19, 2012) I thought I had it beat. My symptoms were still steadily getting worse, but I was happy. I can't remember a single day of my life without pain, but until recently I also couldn't remember a single day consumed by depression. I always have a few small moments of happiness each day. I cling to those moments and make them last in my mind as long as possible.
Something happened this past year; something that I didn't even realize was happening until it was too late. Depression crept up and took over my life. Today I turned to my husband and said, "I've been really depressed and cranky all the time lately, I'm sorry. I'll try harder to be happier again." He said, "You've depressed for a very long time now. I love you, and I hope that this new move will make you happier." The move he was talking about is our move to New York. We're going to be staying with family for awhile, but hopefully we can really set down some roots and begin our lives again.
It's hard to stay happy when the government says that I'm not legally disabled because I can work from home, but no one wants to hire me because I can't work a steady schedule. I never know when I'm going to wake up and can't move. When I say I can't move, I don't mean it hurts too much, I mean that the muscles and tissue become so swollen and tense that I literally can't move them. Have you ever woken up in the morning after sleeping funny and the muscles are so tense that you can't move your neck to one side? It can take hours of stretching with intense pain before you can move that side of your neck. Now imagine that in every muscle of your body, and no amount of stretching relaxes the muscles. All you can do is take a cocktail of muscle relaxers, sedatives, and pain killers; sleep for 15-20 hours; and hope that it's better when you wake up. Sometimes I can wake up and still can't move, and it takes days before I can move again. The longest this has happened was three months. Unfortunately, according to the government it has to happen for twelve months before I qualify for disability.
The thing that gets me depressed is that I try so hard to work and make money, and there are so many people who don't try at all. They just sit back and get disability. I've been told now that if I didn't keep trying to work, I would qualify more. I have to be unemployed for over one year, which I was but couldn't afford a lawyer and had already been denied SSI Disability once, so I had to go back to work and I have jumped from job to job until I couldn't move for the past three months. Now I might have to wait another year before I can apply again. Why do people who don't even try deserve disability and those of us getting laid off left and right, working our butts off, deserve less?
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