Pain

I have chronic pain. I injured my back when I was in college. In the moment of the injury, I had no idea it would result in a chronic problem. When it happened I was in the middle of a very stressful time in my life. I was in the middle of a crazy ex triangle. The ex was a boarderline personality and crossed every boundary known to man. She broke into my apartment, stole my address book and threatened to kill my family/friends. She also broke into my girlfriend's house while we were there. The interaction ended in a physical altercation with me being bitten and suffering an emotional beating. I didn't know how to handle this crazy person other than to try to talk her off a bridge. Instead of breaking up with my gf, I stayed with her and tried to deal with her crazy ass ex baggage as we created our own new baggage together.

Anxiety and fear became a regular part of my life after that. I felt really inhibited by it. I also wasn't taking care of myself - the self-proclaimed athlete. I was smoking and sitting on my ass. My college experience was more about exploring my identity outside of school and experiencing life outside of my parent's house. (As an aside, I grew up with abundance, but there were serious emotional restrictions and my parent's approval was conditional.)

About 5 years after college, I developed rheumatoid arthritis. This again developed during an extremely stressful time in my life. Health wise, I was taking better care of myself. I had finished massage school, was working out and eating better. I had lost 25 pounds and felt like I was on a good path. The only problem was that I had tons of credit card debt that I couldn't get away from and I was trying to untangle myself from a very unhealthy relationship. My mom ended up bailing me out of the debt. I have a ton of insecurity around money and debt and feel forever obligated to my mother for that bail out.

The back pain persists. It got worse last fall. Coincidentally, last fall my wife and I packed our stuff up, sold our house and moved in with my mother...

I got an MRI yesterday, so we'll see what that says.