I am a painfully private individual. My gut feeling is not lay out my personal and painful issues, but my desire to help those who suffer from this condition has led me to set my privacy aside. I hope someone takes something positive from this information.
I was a fairly successful, functional member of society before FM hit me. I had been in upper management, sold cars, drove commercial trucks, and generally excelled in whatever I chose to do.
I also have mild Asperger’s syndrome (would be extremely high functioning if it weren‘t for FM), something that I did not realize until I was 32, but it explained so much. I have Temple Grandin to thank for putting her life story out there. Because of her, I was able to find some peace with myself. However, I must say that having a combination of the Asperger’s and FM is a kind of personal hell that I can’t begin to describe.
It took about 7 years to get a decent handle on FM, and that’s to say I at least have an idea of what I can and can’t do. For me, the illness is so severe that I will never have a full time job again. I can do just about anything for a short period of time, but eventually my pain rolls in hard and shuts me down.
This website was entirely too much for me to undertake and I did have some help working on it. For someone with Asperger’s and a decent level of intelligence, it’s quite the slap in the face to physically suffer from thinking too hard. Using my brain is one of my favorite things, but thinking too hard (even recreationally) actually causes increased pain (in my case, you may not have this problem).
If nothing else, please appreciate the level of pain and suffering I have endured just to put this together. It has been a very difficult labor of concern. One of the ways you can deal with pain is to distract yourself with something enjoyable. This is the absolute opposite.
