Fibromyalgia Frustrations

I'm going about my day, doing whatever tasks I can manage. Inevitably, I come into direct physical contact with something completely benign: someone taps on my arm, or my 9 1/2 pound dog steps on me, or I lightly bump into a handle in the kitchen, or I run into the side of one of our super soft chairs with my leg...you get the idea. A moment later, the part of my body that was touched flares up with pain. A pain that has absolutely no business existing considering the nature of the touch. But there it is. Fibromyalgia.

I wake up and as I come to I become aware that both my arms and hands hurt. A pain deep inside my limbs that exists even when they are completely still. A pain that intensifies greatly with even the simplest action such as picking up a glass of water. A pain that makes me uncertain about my ability to hang onto anything without dropping it, therefore requiring vigilance. A pain that can't be soothed with heat, ice or Advil. I'm rarely sure what exactly I've done to bring it it on, but there it is. Fibromyalgia.

The pains sucks, the other symptoms suck. BUT the worst part about these fibromyalgia pains is that they don't make sense. This lack of reason and common sense about them open me up to ridicule. Nobody believes a light tap on the arm is painful. It shouldn't be. It isn't for everyone else. I must be making it up. I must be exaggerating. I am being dramatic. It's laughable so people laugh. It's just not believable to anyone who hasn't experienced it. Even those closest to me, who know the facts about Fibromyalgia, clearly don't take the reality of those facts seriously.

As a result, my feelings get hurt, my experiences get invalidated, I get angry and there is nothing I can do to make them understand what is going on and how they are hurting me. They know I have fibromyalgia. I've explained how pain can be caused by non-painful stimuli or flare up for no apparently reason. That's all I can do. I can't force anyone to be sensitive to my fibro pains but I'm becoming increasingly intolerant of the insensitivity. Don't I have enough to deal with here?