I’m not sure if it is technically Survivor’s Guilt or what? I’m not sure what you would call it, but I feel guilty. I feel guilty when I’m a buzz-kill and ruin the mood or vibe of those around me because dealing with me is such a burden. I know dealing with myself and my issues is not easy. I feel the guilt of the family wasting money on me for things like my medications, compression gloves, or my feel-good food of the week. I know that the money spent on me could and should be used for something for the family. I feel guilty for having to cancel, postpone or cut short plans because I just don’t feel good, or I’m simply not in the mood. I know that someone was really planning on attending that event, but I just backed out of it. I feel guilty when I call in sick to work for the day. I know my co-workers are counting on me to be there. It is bad enough that I have such a huge impact on my family and their plans, but when it starts to affect friends and co-workers it really starts to weigh really heavy on me. And many times that weight is a crushing weight.

Then there is the guilt I feel when my pain medications are working and the pain is manageable, I feel this way as if I’m cheating or pulling a fast one on the universe, I feel like I’m getting away with something. It is the same feeling I felt when I was in the Marine Corps in 1990 when several of my friends were called up to go play in the big sandbox (Iraq – Desert Storm). I was young, just 21 years old then and I spent much of my adult life training and preparing for war. I mean that is what Marines do, we fight wars, that is what we are trained for and I’m not going. Trust me I wanted to go, I really wanted to go and do what I was trained to do. Now likely what I was trained to do, would not actually see much if any combat as I was in the Intelligence field, but regardless, I was trained to be a Marine, and I was trained to fight too damn it. I felt guilty that I stayed back, almost as if I was not worthy. Now staying back wasn’t a choice, at my Duty Station only two Marines were called up to augment the fighting forces and in reality, they were only gone for about a month or so, but still, I felt guilty. I many levels I still feel that guilt today, nearly 30 years later.

I feel like I’m sneaking my medications or more appropriately, I feel like I should be sneaking my medications. It is the same feeling when I was sneaking a drink of alcohol to kill the pain. I wasn’t really sneaking it, I let my wife know I was having a drink and I know she really didn’t approve of me having a drink, but she also has no way to know how bad the pain truly is, because I often hid that from her as well. I feel as if I’m going behind her back to take my Gabapentin so I can enjoy the “high” of being pain-free for a few hours. I have actually skipped a dose just so I can feel the pain again to make sure it is real and not something I made up in my head.

I have a good friend of mine that also suffers from Chronic pain, her pain is on a much larger and deeper level than my pain. So when I’m pain-free, I feel bad talking to her about it, it seems wrong, it seems like I’m gloating about it.

So when I take my medications and the stars line up and everything in the world of pain is right, I feel guilty. I actually see myself missing the pain on some level.

I’m guilty as charged!