Apples and Horse Dung Both Float

 

Heavy rain came hard enough to swell the stream and carry away whatever lay too close to its banks.

A heap of apples went first. Then a pile of horse dung.

Downstream they floated together, bobbing in the same current, pushed by the same water.

The dung looked around at the apples drifting beside it and became rather pleased with itself.

Clearly, it thought, we are all much the same. Same stream. Same journey. Same importance.

Aesop did not need many words for this one. The dung had confused proximity with equality.

Everybody Gets Tired

Everybody gets tired. That sentence has probably ended more useful conversations about chronic illness than anyone intended.

Everybody gets sore. Everybody forgets things. Everybody has bad days. Everybody wakes up exhausted once in a while.

All true.

And apples and horse dung both float. That does not make them the same thing.

The problem with chronic illness is that we often have to use ordinary words for experiences that are anything but ordinary.

I say tired because English does not give me a tidy little word for: my body feels as though someone unplugged the wall socket, drained the backup battery, misplaced the extension cord, and then suggested I take a brisk walk.

So I say tired. You hear tired. And perhaps you think of staying up too late. Or mowing the yard. Or having a long week.

Those things are real. But they are not automatically the same thing I mean.

Same Word. Different Body.

The same problem happens with pain. Everybody hurts. Of course they do.

People pull muscles, get headaches, sleep wrong, overdo it, develop arthritis, spend six hours assembling furniture with an Allen wrench and lose the will to live.

But chronic pain is not merely ordinary pain that forgot to leave.

Fibromyalgia involves abnormal pain processing and heightened sensitivity in the nervous system. Sleep disturbance is common. Fatigue can be persistent and disproportionate to activity. Cognitive problems can arrive right along with it.

So the words may sound familiar. The mechanisms and consequences may not be.

Same stream. Different cargo.

“I Get Tired Too”

Most people who say this are not trying to be cruel. Sometimes they are genuinely trying to connect. They hear something familiar and reach for the nearest bridge they have.

“I get tired too.”

“I forget words too.”

“I ache when it rains.”

“I need naps sometimes.”

There is nothing wrong with recognizing common human experience.

The trouble begins when recognition becomes comparison. Then comparison becomes equivalence. Then equivalence becomes judgment.

I get tired too, and I still manage to...

There it is. That tiny little turn. Now the conversation is no longer about understanding someone else's limits.

It has become a measuring contest. And chronic illness almost always loses measuring contests designed by healthy people.

The Part You Do Not See

Fibromyalgia fatigue can be difficult to explain because it does not always behave like ordinary tiredness.

You can sleep and still wake exhausted. You can rest and improve only partly. You can do something small and discover afterward that your body considered it a major infrastructure project.

Pain is tiring. Poor sleep is tiring. Constant sensory input is tiring. Cognitive effort is tiring. Trying to function while your nervous system behaves like an overenthusiastic smoke alarm is tiring.

Sometimes I can do the thing. That does not mean the thing was easy. And it certainly does not mean there will be no bill afterward.

People often see the activity. They do not see the recovery. They see the hour out. They do not see the afternoon in bed.

They see the grocery store. They do not see the calculations required before, during, and after.

That part is invisible. And invisible costs are very easy for other people to underestimate.

Similar Is Not Same

This may be one of the most useful sentences in chronic illness: Similar is not the same.

Your tiredness can be real without being my tiredness. Your pain can matter without explaining mine. Your forgetfulness can be frustrating without being equivalent to what happens during a fibromyalgia flare. Your need for rest can be legitimate without telling you what my body requires.

We do not have to diminish one experience to make room for another.

That is the peculiar thing about false equivalence. It pretends fairness requires sameness. It does not.

Fairness requires accuracy. Sometimes two things belong in the same category.

Sometimes they merely happen to be floating beside each other.

The Internet Has a Stream Too

The fable works another way.

Good information and absolute nonsense now travel side by side with remarkable efficiency.

A carefully written medical article can appear directly above a confident stranger explaining that fibromyalgia is caused by parasites, mold, seed oils, one missing mineral, trauma, weak mitochondria, or whatever theory has survived the week.

Same screen. Same font size. Same confidence. Same stream. Different cargo.

And when conventional medicine has not given someone much relief, bad information becomes especially tempting.

That deserves compassion. People in pain want answers. Uncertainty is exhausting.

A confident explanation feels good. A simple cure feels even better. But confidence is not evidence. Popularity is not evidence. Anecdote is not evidence.

And being carried beside good information does not turn bad information into good information.

The Quiet Truth

The horse dung did not become an apple because the rain carried them together.

And human experiences do not become identical because we use the same words to describe them.

So when someone says they are tired, hurting, overwhelmed, foggy, or spent, perhaps the better response is not: “Me too.”

Perhaps it is: “What does that feel like for you?”

That leaves room for difference. And difference is not division. Sometimes it is simply the beginning of understanding.

Because yes—apples and horse dung both float.

But the stream does not decide their worth.

🍎What experience in your life has been mistaken for something ordinary simply because other people had a familiar word for it?