Pain

The pain has been around since I was in my early teens but for many reasons I kept it to myself. There are little moments that completely govern how you see something? It may be something you read or a passing comment, but it becomes a defining moment that effects your thinking. For me, it was my middle school basketball coaches.
The goal of this is not to place blame, only to recount events that led to my current way of thinking. Once I entered middle school, I played volleyball and basketball. I wasn't very competitive. I was an alright player but nothing special.
I had asthma and had difficulty running but a girl a year ahead of me had asthma and she could run. So I was told to step it up. One year, my coach told me she was warned that I was a whiner ( if I got hurt I would touch my arm or hold my finger) and that it wouldn't be tolerated. She did this the first week of practice in front of everyone. She hadn't even taken a moment to get to know me. Just to mention, I hated attention. (I mean HATED attention of any kind.) I was told to suck it up. So I did. I stopped saying when I was in pain. I stopped whining. If I jammed my finger, I hid it. If I got cut on the floor, I wiped the blood my jersey and kept going. When I was in pain even on the verge of passing out, I forced myself to ignore it. It was two coaches, two years, but it stayed with me.
Turns out my asthma was caused my a birth defect ( it was different than most others'). Turns out the pain in my arm that mentioning it led to me serving the entire length of volleyball practice was a separation within the rotary cuff that resulted in 4 years of therapy.
Again, this is not to place blame...it is just to show why I didn't voice pain or physical issues. Not that my coaches meant for that to happen, it just did. They didn't know my physical issues or the impact their words made. They were doing their jobs and tried to call it like they saw it.
My mind twisted things, and I began to believe that everyone had the pain and issues that I had (the other girl had asthma and she could run, other girls have bad cramps but they could handle it). My mind told me I was a wuss, a whiner. The coaches said it so it must be true. So I kept my mouth shut.
As I got older, I also ran into doctors that told me they could see nothing wrong. I told that as a 'stop whining'. One told me some of the pain after I had sex. (Yeah that was bull shit) Others told me that a lot of people deal with it and that I just needed to toughen up.
I can't change the past. I can't change the person I was but I can change the way I think now. The pain I have had since I was about 12 is not normal. Yes, I am in pain but that doesn't make me a wuss and some pain is not made to live with.
I don't deserve to live in pain and neither do you.