Ow? What is pain I do not know, and yet I have chronic pain

"Rate your pain on a scale of 1-10"

"I don't know"

I'm always in pain. I don't know how much pain I'm in. Pain is life. Pain doesn't make sense to me. Pain is always there but how do you process it, it is nonsense.

I'm told to rate my pain. I don't know how.

I'm autistic. I also have chronic pain. I'm autistic. I also had disabling pain as a child.

I don't understand pain.

I don't know any other way to exist.

There's a lot of talk about how much autistic people process pain differently, and I can't see those conversations and not wonder, but how much would we actually be able to process pain if our pain was treated, if our pain was listened to, if our pain was taken seriously?

I'm autistic. My pain doesn't matter.

I started having disabling migraines at age 7. They weren't frequent then, but they were extreme in how painful they were. I have memories of that, even if I can't comprehend the pain now. I sprain my ankle walking on flat ground. My body doesn't listen to itself. Pain is just something that happens. I don't know if I ever had a way to explain pain and have it understood, have it listened to, have it comprehended and taken seriously, rather than just being something that wasn't a big deal to everyone around me, so it should clearly not be a big deal to me.

I'm autistic, if I can't explain then it isn't real.

I grew up pushing through pain. I don't have memories of how much pain I had at what ages. My childhood memories aren't that clear. I know that by the time I was an adult I had multiple forms of chronic pain. People talk about diagnoses and treatments and things for pain. This feels like a mystery an imaginary thing that doesn't really exist.

I'm autistic. Nobody listens.

I grew up pushing through pain. It was the only way I had available. It was how I could exist. It was how to survive. It was the only way I could get through day to day. I don't remember details, but I remember this. I don't know if others knew when I was in pain if it was anything other than the migraines that shut me down completely. I don't know if they ever knew there was a possibility of pain.

I'm autistic. Nobody thinks to ask.

I grew up pushing through pain. Now I deal with the consequences.

People talk about pushing through pain like it's a good thing. Like it's how to manage to get to do things you want to do. Like it's ways you can manage to take less meds, and like meds are awful things. People talk about pushing through pain like it's a way to make everything better. It's what I did because I didn't have any choice otherwise.

Now I deal with the consequences.

I don't understand the concept of pain.

No really. I don't understand the concept of pain.

I mean it. I don't understand the concept of pain.

This is more than not being able to rate on a scale of 1-10. This is not recognizing that dislocating a joint means maybe I should actually go to the hospital. It's not like my body is actually telling me I should. This is pushing myself past boundaries, not noticing how injured I am, forcing my body through situations it can't be in, because I don't know the difference. I don't have a warning signal.

Pain is a warning sign. Mine was taken away.

I grew up pushing through pain. Now I deal with the consequences.

I need others to watch out for me. I need to analyze. I need to watch the signs that aren't pain. Because pain means nothing. I don't know how to use pain to keep myself safe.

This is dangerous. This isn't a good thing that pushing through the pain lets me do. This is a terrifying reality of needing to survive and finding ways to survive.

But I'm autistic. So I just process pain differently.

I'm autistic so I just "have a high pain tolerance".

What if people just paid attention to my pain?

What if I didn't have to survive in a world where pain was an unrelenting reality of pushing through with no possibility of anyone even recognizing it existed?

Because dissociation is my life now. I dissociate from pain constantly. I dissociate to survive, because dissociation is survival. Dissociation means not fighting my body in more ways that I can fight it. Instead I just don't have a body. I'm just a being who lives in a meat shell that happens to exist here, that I am using to interact, because I need some way to interact.

But I'm autistic. So dissociation is pathologized into processing differently.

What if I was just given the chance of not needing to?

What if I was allowed to have a body?

What if I was allowed to survive in a way that wasn't needing to dissociate to exist in a world so hostile to me?

I'm autistic, and I have chronic pain. And I don't know how my body works with pain. I don't know and I can't know, because I can't have the option of understanding how my body interacts with things like pain. I need to separate myself, because I need to exist, and I was never allowed to do anything but find ways to exist. And this was how I could.

But, now that means instead, it's all because I'm autistic.

And not because I have pain.

And how many other autistic people is this happening to instead of anyone listening?