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Manic Depressive. Bi-Polar. Depressed. Back injury. Parkinson's. Etc.
So many have an invisible pain they deal with. Passed over for promotions. Denied jobs. Ridiculed when you needed to take time off because you just could not make it in to work because leaving your 'safe place' was just too hard to.
Being gay and realizing that you did not fit into the model the rest of the word follows, and trying to deal with that day to day - and your friends just don't get it because everything they see each day is about straights and their lifestyle.
Walking to the store with your kids while it is snowing as car after car drives past you spraying you with melted, dirty snow, and the person inside that car is fretting over how their hair and clothes look while you are just praying to God that you can make it to the store and back for formula without getting killed (and dreaming of being back in your small rented place that won't have the heat on much longer, but it is better than being out here in the snow).
I have been through many hells in my life, lately diagnosed with bi-polar as well as being manic depressive - which runs in my family. I have been poor, on food stamps at one time, and have walked downed snowy roads because I had to choose between gas and repairs for the car or food. I have also been on the better end of it.
I watched a friend struggle with coming out to others after he came out to me, watched the pain over the years he felt because he did not want to 'let down' his parents by telling them he was gay - and felt the sting from him telling me that he did not reveal it to me, his best friend, for many years because he feared how I would take it.
I have watched as my X wife has suffered day in and out - and yet on other days can be out doing yard work and such...and folks who only see her doing that just don't get that a few hours a week doing such things leaves her exhausted and in bed the rest of the week. They don't see that.
watched my brother go from a wonderful worker at his job to nearly crippled with fear and unable to work - Can't see it when you look at him, but the pain is real and crippling.
My suffering - well people cannot see it either, it is invisible to them. But it is real.
I am not in a wheel chair. I can be outside raking the yard and laughing with my daughter as we build a fire, then posting on here on DU. If folks just see those things they see only a small portion out of a day/week and wonder about it all.
They don't see the hourly pain. The many moments of sadness, worry, depression. They see only a glimpse in time of my life and that of others.
Invisible pain to some. All too visible to others- not just me but many others.
Sadly, I too have failed at times to see the pain of others and looked at things from a high horse. It is all too easy to ignore what we cannot see.
Folks want to see evidence of things - god, love, where Obama was born :rofl: etc - if you don't see it how can it exist???
Well...It does. I don't need any more evidence than to sit with you and listen.
I cannot see your pain. Cannot feel it. Cannot test it.
But that does not mean it is not real. Mine is too.
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