Chronic Pain Feels Like an End-All

At First, Chronic Pain Can Feel Manageable

I’ve been involved in the equine industry since I was a kid and both sides of my grandparents had horses long before I did. I opened a horse boarding facility back in 2011 and in 2012, a woman was boarding a temperamental horse with me.

There were a couple of incidents with the horse, but there was one instance in particular that contributed to my chronic pain and caused my dislocated shoulder. At first, I shrugged it off and tried to continue working. A few days later, my shoulder set itself. I never went to a doctor and what I didn’t know then was that the first injury caused structural damage on the way out and on the way back in.  My shoulder always gave me a little bit of an issue after that but I felt it was nothing I couldn’t handle. 

In many cases, chronic pain is something that grows over time. It’s a constantly growing pain that can get to the point where simple tasks feel nearly impossible. If this happens, it’s so important to do everything necessary to care for your pain and injuries to help ease some of that pain, even if it never fully goes away. 

I wasn’t getting better

Fast forward to May of 2015. One of my personal horses got sick one day and before the vet got there, I was trying to get him back up. When I pulled, that unstable right shoulder dislocated again and did some damage to my rotator cuff. Six weeks of healing time turned to ten, ten turned to sixteen and it was becoming increasingly clear that something was really wrong.

I wasn’t getting better. My work – at the time, I was managing a pony party business as well as working in a kennel that trained and raised police and military K9s – started to suffer. For the first time in my life, I was unable to do my job.

I was miserable, hopeless, and starting to hate myself

This was when shit got real. I was scared, exhausted, and in pain every day, I couldn’t dress myself, or wash my own hair. The pain got worse. For someone as active as I was, it was the end of the world for me and I had no idea how to process it.

I walled up and shut everyone out. All I felt was miserable, hopeless, and I was starting to hate myself. My body went from being the fittest it has ever been to the worst shape of my life. Things got dark and in that darkness, I closed out the one person in this world who loved me the most – my partner.

He did nothing wrong

You see, when you’re dealing with pain that turns your vision black trying to attempt simple tasks like drinking a cup of coffee and narcotic pain medications that make you slow, fogged, and sick to your stomach, sex is the last thing on your mind. Despite how much you may want it or miss that connection with your partner. Life got tricky then, my boyfriend (long-term – we started dating before my first injury) felt like he was being pushed out.

He did nothing wrong but I couldn’t tell him I hated myself because how do you tell someone who loves you that you don’t love yourself and make them understand the pain you are in?

Sex only happened when I was consistently on some form of pain control and most of the time, it was more like suffering through it for me. There was a huge disconnect in our relationship and things were starting to take a turn for the worse.

We went from being unable to keep our hands off each other and semi-public sex to…almost nothing. 

Taking Action and Starting the Conversation

Pain is my life. So the real question was, how do I fix this? What happens now? Am I doomed to a life of misery and pain? Will I ever be able to put my own shirt on? What about taking his off? I knew a bit part of the problem was my inability to have the conversation and be honest with my partner. 

One day after therapy I told him that I was no longer comfortable in my own skin and I had know idea how to be myself again. That I felt like my personality, my identity, and my comfort were all in shattered pieces in a trail behind me. I was waiting for him to tell me he was going to leave, that he couldn’t handle being with someone who got tired after grocery shopping but then he said three words. “We’ll fix it.” I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear those words and when we started working together as a team (much like how it should be in the bedroom), everything changed. 

We Started to Work as a Team

It was far from the “I can’t do this.” that I expected and the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t feel like I was drowning just below the surface anymore. From the moment I opened up, things started to change. Sex started to become fun again when we started to work together and learn which positions were the least painful for me. I learned how to speak up and my partner listened.

We made changes like bracing my shoulder in a mountain of pillows, blankets, and ice packs while I was on my back. We explored, and we learned new things – things that happened at a slower pace but brought me pleasure once more.

It was a completely different experience for me to learn how to like slow-paced sex and I actually found that I enjoyed it. Sex was no longer about the end goal but how to get there in the most pleasurable way possible. 

Beyond that, I found that sex toys were a great way to help achieve pleasure once more. Flexible and longer handles allowed me to move between our bodies more easily and navigate different positions. Lubrication helped with some additional stimulation and even with heightened sensations that I found hard to achieve on my own with my pain.