Tabby’s Story

Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia (Just the tip of the iceberg)

A word I had never even heard before suddenly became the label that defined me, or so I thought.

The day I was diagnosed, I thought it meant answers, maybe even hope. But instead, it marked the beginning of a battle I never asked for. A life where I woke up every morning in a body that felt eighty years old, trapped in pain that never took a break. My joints throbbed and burned as if they were filled with fire, my bones felt fragile and stiff, and even the smallest movements came at a cost.

Soon, I couldn’t go to school anymore. Online classes were my last grasp at normalcy, they started slipping through my fingers. My brain felt like it was underwater, words blurring and thoughts dissolving before I could catch them. The fatigue was bone-deep, the kind that no amount of sleep could touch.

I forgot what peace felt like.

What a day without pain felt like.

There were nights when the muscle spasms hit so violently that I screamed for someone, anyone, to help me but no one really could. Gabapentin. Muscle relaxers. Anti-inflammatories. Pills with promises that faded as fast as they came. Nothing dulled the pain for long.

Meanwhile, life moved on without me. My friends packed their bags for college, and started their adult lives while I stayed behind, in a room that felt smaller every day. The world I once belonged to now existed through screens and secondhand stories.

I spent a long time searching for reasons to keep going and some days, I still do. Chronic illness steals so much: your youth, your plans, your identity. It leaves you grieving the person you used to be while trying to make peace with the one you’ve become.

But here’s what I’ve learned, even when your world feels unbearably small, even when pain is all you’ve ever known, there is still strength in surviving. Every day I get through is one more day my illness doesn’t win. And though I may not remember what it’s like to live without pain, I’m learning what it means to live with it and that, somehow, is its own kind of victory.