text: Fibromyalgia. That’s what the doctor had said years ago. Ever since I was young, I struggled with pain. I was called a wimp in school and even my parents were a little disappointed by me. “Man up,” my dad would say, noting how I would seemingly always complain about pain. When I was a kid, I would just have odd pains. They would come out of seemingly nowhere. I would look at a kid that was bullying me and a few moments later, I’d be in pain without him even touching him. When I thought about jumping off the swing set like the other kids, I would end up feeling pain in my legs. I did not really understand it when I was younger, and I would not until I was much older. As the years went on, I would still feel, what I thought, was random pain. I had gone to the doctor and he said that I was dealing with fibromyalgia, which is a bit embarrassing. It basically reinforces everything I’d been told throughout my life - except now I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I always thought I could grow out of “being a wimp” or grow into “being a man.” But apparently, if I wanted to do that, I would have to be on one of those TV medications. You know the ones; the medications with the commercials where mellow music plays, accompanied by a soft, feminine voice talking about pain and then the myriad of side-effects. Yet, I went ahead with it. I figured that if anything could help, I would try it. But it did not help in the slightest. To the untrained observer, it would appear to help because I was not always in pain. However, I still felt pain. A lot of it. For example, one of the jobs I had required me to cross about four lanes of traffic on a busy street. There was no stoplight or stop sign for the other drivers, so I was forced to cut across. However, every time I did, I felt an immense pain crash through my body. It was intense and shook me to the core. I recall having to sit in my car for a few minutes before work every day while I waited for the pain to subside. This happened every single day I took that commute. It was the fastest way there, and any other route would take me an extra five minutes to get there. I guess, at the time, I weighed my options and decided to deal with the pain if it meant shaving off a minute or two. I guess I should have known something was off when the pains started becoming less and less frequent. There was nothing that triggered the slowing down, but I was grateful for it at the time. Put yourself in my shoes: if your entire life was pain, then when that pain started to subside, you would be grateful, no matter the cause nor who it hurt in the process. Still, people noticed my enhanced demeanor. I was no longer sulking around, waiting for the next pain to strike. Instead, I was cheerful and ready to tackle each day. Sure, I still felt the pains every now and then, but they had become few and far between. That’s not to say they did not hurt like hell, though. I would feel like someone gored me with a sharp object on some days, and other days, I would feel a sharp pain across my throat, among other such pains. Still, I managed to get through it. Then they stopped entirely. I can recall the very day they stopped, too. I was walking to the mailbox when I felt a sharp pain strike through my chest, as if I had just been shot. I clutched my chest and groaned as I fell to my knees, but as soon as it started, it stopped. I shrugged it off and went to get the mail. After that day, the pain stopped. Sure, I still felt normal pain from cuts and bruises that I would get, but not those intense, random pains. I should have been elated; I should have felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, but it was the opposite. I felt a dark sense of foreboding. With each passing day, I felt myself longing for the pain again. But each day, it did not return. Instead, I felt dread and paranoia, as if something bad was going to happen, but I was not sure what it would be. I wanted to chalk it up to anxiety - something I dealt with every so often (hey, who hasn’t?), but this was different. I could tell when I was worrying about something unrealistic. I could usually talk myself down from an anxiety attack. This was something else. I did not even know what I was fearing or where it came from. When the paranoia would set in, I did not know what I was supposed to be on the lookout for, if anything at all. That brings me to a few nights ago. I had this vivid dream where I was in my house, but it wasn’t me in there. I suppose it’s hard to explain. Have you ever had a dream where you were looking through your own eyes, but it was almost like it wasn’t you in your body? That’s what I felt like. I was merely an observer as this dream version of myself wrote something down. As I looked through those familiar, yet foreign, eyes, I could make out the writing clearly. It was indeed my handwriting, but I did not know what the message was supposed to mean. It read out: “There are three of us left. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how to stop it. This is the only way I can think of communicating. Be safe.” I didn’t wake up immediately after that as most people seem to when they’ve had weird dreams or nightmares. I slept throughout the night, but when I woke up, the message had imprinted itself in my mind. I could see it clearly no matter what I was doing or thinking about. But still, I’m not sure what it means. All I know is that it did nothing to calm my paranoia.