I’m 32 years old and have had fibromyalgia (FMS) for going on eight years now.

About four years ago, however, I discovered I was a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) which explained a lot about my past. Why I was always tired after social gatherings, why injuries felt worse, why stress and I did not mix, and why sleep was harder for me.

Sometime after that, I found out that I had emotional neglect and that I was parentified and enmeshed with my mother (who herself was the survivor of trauma from her alcoholic father.) Not to mention my mother and father divorced and then my father died, all before I was four years old.

After this, in self-absorbed fashion, my mother upsticked and dragged me all over, moving us six times in ten years, while she went to law school full time. She switched careers from geology to law, a decade before I became financially stable.

It was a blur of houses, schools, neighborhoods. There was never stability and I never felt safe. Within two and a half years there were open houses, showings, packing, and moving days. I made friends but didn’t keep them long, so I sort of got used to being alone and not expecting to keep them.

My mother also has high narcissistic and OCPD traits and our relationship the past eight years has been turbulent, ironic as I’m reliant on her financially still as I can’t work due to my chronic illness. COVID has not helped with the stress and anxiety part of living with chronic illness, either. I have not gotten the vaccine yet as I’m concerned about side effects.

Finding therapy is hard, what with COVID and all that, but I’ve tried and they don’t ‘get me’ so it’s like maybe I’m not meant to get help, but do self-work. Over the past three years I’ve used systems like tarot, astrology, the enneagram, MTBI, numerology, human design, and Chinese astrology to help understand myself.

I have been freelance writing the past three years, unpaid, but it gives me some purpose and something to do. I’ve shared my discovery with readers and have helped others understand why they may too be more pain prone. I’m determined to write a novel this year, as well.