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To My Loved Ones Who Can't See the Pain I Feel Inside

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People just can’t see it. I am shouting inside but silent on the outside. I want to run away, escape or just return to who I was before everything happened.

I don’t know what to do to make my family feel better. Knowing they are suffering because of me creates a burden to me. They just keep telling me, “Be strong, you can make a bigger effort.” But the problem is that they just don’t understand that isn’t always possible.

Yes, I am angry at what I am going through. I am 17 and I have a chronic illness that will be beside me for the rest of my days. I am scared of the future, because I know it won’t be the way I imagined it would be before everything happened. I used to dream about the future, and now I just dream of having a second without pain.

It’s very hard feeling pain 24/7. You are always exhausted and you can’t recharge your energy. I feel like I was burned, pinched, stabbed, cut, that painful feeling when you have your hand in a bucket of ice and more. I never thought it would be so hard doing all my daily activities. Today I just thought of laying in bed because it’s just too much.

I keep fighting for all my loved ones even if they don’t understand at all what I am feeling. I know they will always be there for me, but sometimes I wish they didn’t know me so they didn’t have to go through this. They don’t deserve it.

Nobody deserves living with this or other diseases, but I believe everything happens for a reason. And people going through this are stronger and learn to appreciate life pain-free.

If you are a patient, know you can do this and that you have to live through this because you can get over it. If you are family, don’t be hard on him or her, just be there with them and try to do something to make them feel better, not worse (because it’s very easy for that to happen — even if what you are saying has the best intentions, be careful). If you are a friend, be there for him or her and never leave him or her, even if they ask you to or it starts to get difficult, because they will always need you, even if they don’t say it out loud.

Having someone you can count on is the best thing. It helps us get through this easier, so please never leave.

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Originally published: April 21, 2016
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