A Letter to My Younger Self on Living With Chronic Pain
/By Crystal Lindell
This is a letter to myself. A letter I wish I had been able to write 13 years ago, when I first developed chronic pain at age 29. Hopefully, my fellow chronic pain survivors will find practical advice mixed with some hope in the words below.
Dear Crystal,
I have some bad news. The pain you have in your ribs is not going to go away.
It’s going to linger and spike, and sometimes it will make you want to slit your wrists in the bathtub. It’s going to completely change your entire life.
In fact, the stabbing pain you’re now dealing with is going to alter your very soul.
Your entire life is going to change so dramatically, that 13 years later, it’ll be difficult for me to even put myself back in your shoes.
While I vividly remember the hopelessness, confusion and fear that’s crushing you right now, it’s difficult for me today, at age 42, to even remember your world view in 2013.
So much of what you think about the world around you, the people in it, and even of yourself is going to change. That change is going to be forced onto you by this new physical pain, which in 2026 will still have no cure.
However, over time, and through lots of trial and error, you will eventually find a medication regime that mostly works for you. You will also finally find a doctor who believes you, and treats your pain as seriously as it demands.
There is so much other good stuff in store for you too. I promise.
I know the concept of “good stuff” feels impossible right now, but I swear that good things will happen to you in the years to come. And so many of those good things will only happen because of the very pain that currently feels like it’s ruining your life.
For starters, the pain you’re feeling is eventually going to lead you to the love of your life.
Yes, I know you’re currently dating someone. But he is not the love of your life. Over the next few years, as your body betrays you, he will do the same.
I know that since he is more than a decade older than you, you expect to help him through his health problems as he ages – but he is not expecting the same in return. He does not like that you now have a chronic illness, and he does not want to take care of you. He will even say this to you directly at one point.
He is very selfish. But you’ll linger with him longer than you should because even selfish support feels like support with everything else that you’re going through. It’s ok. You’ll need time to process the loss of him in your life. And you need to play it all out – so that when you do finally meet your true love, you’ll understand what makes him so important.
The two of you will meet at a political event. You’ll both be there to advocate for pain patients to have better access to opioids. That’s right, the love of your life has chronic pain too. It’s the kind of double bad luck that almost cancels out, when you realize that it’s the very thing that brings the two of you into each other’s lives in the first place.
He’s handsome, he’s funny, and best of all, he doesn’t mind taking care of you for the rest of his life.
You’re also going to move. And I don’t mean across town.
Eventually you will realize that living with family is the only way you can endure all of this. But that is something you’ve already begun to realize. It will take you less than six months to decide to move in with your mom.
Yes, this means losing your part-time job as a youth leader that you love so much. It will be a heartbreaking loss. A loss you don’t deserve. There is not much good to say about this loss, other than the fact that you will survive it. And through that loss, your ability to empathize will expand.
And while you will be able to maintain your career and even your current full-time job for the next nine years, eventually you will lose that too. That loss is only partly because of the chronic pain though. It’s more because of the burn out, which the chronic pain doesn’t exactly help with.
But it’s ok. You will still find other ways to write, and even ways to get paid a little to do it. And you will be happier without your former corporate overlords making you so miserable.
Plus, writing about all of your experiences will help countless people endure their own chronic pain. Many of them will even reach out to you to thank you for the many ways you helped them cope. Your pain will go out into the world and make it a slightly better place.
Also, in a few years, you’re going to get a cat. And that cat will lead to three more cats. I know, I know. It sounds impossible right now, but for some reason your cat allergies will fade, and those cats will eventually come to help you get through the especially bad pain flares.
For now, my most practical advice is to talk to your doctor about a prescription sleeping pill so that you can finally get some real rest. He will give it to you, I promise.
Also, remember that doctors are not gods. They will get a lot of stuff wrong in the years to come, and you’re going to have to advocate for yourself if you want to survive. The confidence to do that will come to you first as a necessity, and then as something that’s part of your very being. You’ll wonder how you ever navigated the world without it.
One last thing – and this is especially important – I really need you to keep going.
I need you to survive each long day – and each even longer night – so that we can make it to 2026. I need you to stay alive long enough to start to see that even a life with debilitating chronic pain is worth living. Because it very much is.
I wish that I was writing to tell you that your pain will be cured, and that everything will go back to how it was before your ribs started to feel like someone was stabbing them with a butcher knife every night.
But I really believe that your actual future is even better. Nothing goes back to the way it was before the pain started. And that’s the very best part.
