It’s been a week since my official diagnosis. One week since it was confirmed that I do indeed have something wrong with me and my pains are caused by something out of my control and not the fact I am overweight. It is something I am still processing if I am honest. Something that still hasn’t sunk in. Honestly, I am not sure it ever truly will.

You see, it has been a while since someone listened to me and took my concerns seriously. Over the years, I have gotten used to the eye rolls and the hypochondriac comments and just gotten on with things. Trips to the GP to ‘sort things out’ were few and far between and slowly I stopped bothering. Deciding this was just my body now I resorted to Dr Google whenever new pains developed. (FYI: I never acted on any advice even when the symptom checker told me I may be nearly dead and should ring 999. I just had a nap instead! Googling symptoms is a hobby and I never take it as gospel despite it bringing up FM quite often!)

At one point, I was convinced everyone else was right and I was wrong.

As I found out recently, I am medically healthy despite my size. So surely, the issue must be with me? The way I stand, the way I sit. The fact I spend a lot of my time either lugging sacks of spuds around the shop for my day job or cooped up behind the laptop writing. Clearly, if I just changed my lifestyle, if I lost some weight, if I just moved more, if, if, if………..

But not once did I stop to think what IF it WASN’T me. What if, I was doing nothing to cause these pains and actually, what if, my exhaustion, my pains and my excess weight were BECAUSE of how I am feeling and what was happening in my body. Why should I? The professionals seemed to know what was to blame and they had to be right didn’t they?

But that is all in the past now. Right now, I am living with Fibromyalgia.

Today I do have fibromyalgia. Today, I have woken up the same as usual and gotten on with my day. The same as I did before. But I can’t help feeling a bit of imposter syndrome kicking in. I don’t feel like some other FM (fibromyalgia) sufferers. How can I still do what I do on a day to day basis when others with the same thing can only dream about being as active?

I suppose I feel a bit like a fraud. Like I am making it up. Despite knowing deep down, it must be what I have, I still feel like I am somehow cheating and my diagnosis will soon be reverted and I will be exposed as a faker.

It will take some time I think before I truly accept it. The relief of having a diagnosis is long gone and the reality of still living each day in pain is back. It isn’t so much of a shock. Yet still, the feeling that I am a fraud still sticks with me. Will I shake that? Will that ever truly leave me? Honestly, I’m not sure. It may pass with time. It may not, who knows. The only thing I know is that this is my reality now.

Before, I could imagine that a test will show something really simple and a course of treatment will stop it and I will be as right as rain, whatever that means! Now I know different.

So I am learning to cope. Learning to accept and most importantly learning to not feel like I am an imposter, despite looking like it to the outside world. But that there is the issue isn’t it. One for another post. How others perceive you can have a huge impact whether you know it or not.

So for now, I am learning to live with Fibromyalgia and manage my condition without giving up everything I do now.

Learning to say no, not to take on too much. To accept that I will have to make changes and adjustments to my life because I need to and take the damn naps whenever I need to. Because I always need to take the naps!