yes and it makes it so difficult to explain symptoms to doctors bc they ask how long it’s been and i don’t know! i just absorb it into the everyday bad and keep it pushing

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for instance, while i think i feel *acute* pain at full force—i react when i stub my toe—, sometimes the pain from rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia doesn’t register as “pain” so much as like, a kind of physical exhaustion or “resistance” to movement. sometimes it doesn’t occur to me that i’m in physical pain until i pause and focus on what my body’s feeling

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