the real pain of chronic pain

on the best of days it's a muscle ache, on the worst, it's a stinging, burning pinched nerve running the entire length of my body.
the pain is technically caused by my nerve tics, which tighten the muscles in my neck and back every few seconds. the tourett's itself is not painful, and most of my nerve tics are pretty benign, but this one has stuck around for nearly 2 years and wreaked more havoc on my system than any other that i can remember.
makes me feel kind of pathetic. i'm 21 years old and most days my activity is dictated by how badly i hurt.
some days i skip meals because it's too painful for me to bend my head to my plate. some days i've been forced to draw with my left hand because the right is too sore. i've stood in a hot shower and cried because it offered no reprieve. massages are almost too painful for me to bear and leave me sore for days.
i've tried drugs, acupuncture, yoga, you name it-but so long as my nerve tics continue, only the symptoms can be treated. even more frustrating is that relief is often hard for me to acquire, whether cost or time prohibitive.
and despite everything, truly the worst part of the situation is the cancelling of plans with friends and delaying of projects and progress because of pain. so much of my life now is wasted while i convalesce from a condition with no forseeable end. it is the absolute decider, and i am not so much living as i am snatching bits of life between long periods of pain.

in writing this, i'm not looking for sympathy or special treatment. its purpose is only to create an understanding, and perhaps in some ways an apology to all of the people i've had to blow off.
i truly appreciate every single one of you and hope that my constant cancelling of plans hasn't been taken personally, because it's absolutely impersonal.
now you know.
-mo