19 Things People With Chronic Pain Want You To Know

1. If we had the choice, we would never cancel plans.

2. Our illness won’t just go away. It isn’t a cold.

3. We don’t know how to answer you when you ask us if we’re feeling better yet.

Because we aren’t…and we might never be.

4. Sometimes, all we need is to just know you are here for us.

6. We’re trying very hard to lead a normal life.

7. Some days, it’s a struggle just to get out of bed. But on other days, we feel as if we could run at least part of a marathon!

8. We have a difficult time explaining how it feels to suffer from chronic pain.

9. We need a lot of sleep.

10. Please, please do not tell us that someone, somewhere has it worse than we do.

That only makes us feel worse.

11. You’d think dealing with pain on a daily basis would mean we always know how to manage it. Nope.

13. Just because you haven’t heard of our condition doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

14. We may not look sick, but we are sick.

15. We don’t necessarily want sympathy, we just want acceptance.

We just want our feelings and conditions to be validated by you and society.

17. More often than not, we want you to ask us about our condition.

You will not upset us.

18. It may be a little difficult for us to listen to your adventures.

But it’s not because we don’t care — because we want to have adventures of our own.

19. And most of all, we want you to know we appreciate you and everything you do.

Thanks for being a part of our life.