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Home / Thoughts / Emotional pain vs Physical pain

Emotional pain vs Physical pain

Written by Sean on Sunday, April 16, 2006

It seems to me that there isn’t a whole lot of difference between mental anguish and physical pain. In fact, it is often the case that emotional/mental problems will cause physical pain. Why is it, then, that it’s perfectly acceptable to get out of chores by claiming that one’s back hurts, whereas you’re expected to just pick yourself by the bootstraps and do it anyway if you’re dealing with depression?

Of course, it’s not visible when it’s depression. It’s often more sustained, though in my current situation, my partner’s been having chronic back pain problems. And so it falls on to me to do just about all the chores in the house. A month ago, as a test, I did laundry, as in, I did *laundry*. Note that the test wasn’t doing the laundry itself, I do all the laundry all the time. I washed every single bit of washable clothing in the house. It took me the entire weekend. I did loads after loads. I hung it to dry, and picked it up and folded about half of it away. The other half was left on the dining room table (which we never use anyway, always eat in the lounge). I left it there, purposely thinking that at *some* point she’d fold it and put it away. Yesterday, we had guests over to dinner. The laundry still wasn’t folded, I ended up doing it anyway. Unimpressed, to say the least.

But then, perhaps I *am* impressed. Impressed at the consistency and tenacity.

I even changed the bed (which I also do all the time). A "thank you" would have been nice, but I rarely get those. Apparently, men expect to be thanked for doing things that women do all the time, and that men never thank them for it, so why should women do?. I don’t expect to be thanked. But it would be nice, and for the records, I notice when things are done, and I thank people who do them, regardless of gender.

What’s that got to do with being transabled? Well, maybe nothing. I don’t know. As I said, it seems more acceptable to say "I can’t do WYX because my back/arm/leg/head/whatever-body-part is hurting" than to say "I really can’t get moving or motivated to do anything because I’m fighting depression". Perhaps in some way, having transabled feelings is a way to want an "excuse" to do things differently? Before you thing this is crap, I should point out that I do NOT want to be a para because I don’t want to do chores!!! But who knows, there might be a small part there, I don’t know.