I have always been a hopeless actor and have never been able to disguise how I feel. One look at me and you know how I’m doing that day.
But you don’t have to see me to know how I am. My voice is a giveaway too, certainly to my mother. Every day I phone her at a prearranged time, and even when I try to sound chirpy and cheerful, as if the pain isn’t killing me that day, she knows straight away how I really am. She can tell immediately whether I’m having a good or bad day.
I hate that, because I hate upsetting her. Many days I haven’t wanted to make that phone call because it ends up with the two of us in tears. My mother has enough on her plate without my pain adding to hers.
It’s bad enough that chronic pain has consumed my life for the past two years, but I hate how it impacts on others too; above all, how it impacts on my mother.
I wish I was a better actor or, better still, that the pain would ease. Then I wouldn’t have to dread phoning her on my very painful days, like the one I’m having today.
frommypulpit 