The Beauty in Being Dismantled

By Melyssa Corrigan

Fibromyalgia is an artful beast, feasting only on your insides and not all at once. I was 46 when finally diagnosed. Today, two months past 50, I am just beginning to sit with the revelation that I’ve never been without it. Everyone’s is different. Mine is heavy, like boulders have replaced pieces of me lost along the way.

On paper, the constituents read something like this: premature at birth, colic, growing pains, TMJ disorder, anxiety, exercise intolerance, concentration issues, memory issues, heat intolerance, Graves’ disease, endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, cold intolerance, bleeding ulcers, paresthesia, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, high-tone pelvic floor dysfunction, brain fog, chronic fatigue.

I do not pity myself; I observe.

It takes 15 hours of restless sleep and a finely tuned mix of gabapentin and THC before I am able to get myself out of bed each afternoon. Another two for the brain fog to clear long enough for me to make dinner for my family with some semblance of humanity. There are three of us, not including our beloved mutt and cat. I set a place for my husband and one for my teenage stepdaughter and vanish upstairs to lie down when I am done. I know this makes them sad. It only guts me when I let it.

I can’t partake in the meals I cook for them anyway as these days I follow a gluten-free, dairy-free, low fodmap, IC friendly, no nightshades, no alcohol, no caffeine, just shoot me in the face diet in hopes of warding off further implosion. I do not think it’s working. I’ve always been long and lithe through no effort of my own and despite a vast and voracious appetite. Now I’m just bony and empty.

On a good day, I am out of bed for four hours, on a great day, six. My need to maximize those hours is all-consuming and does not allow for spontaneity of any kind. Pleasure leads to pain without debate. Plans are also never made as I already know I’ll be feeling unwell, thank you. I’m booked interminably.

Misjudgments and misdiagnoses and many, many misfortunes come along with a chronic illness like fibromyalgia. It’s a breeding ground for self loathing that runs rampant over time until you’re finally whittled down to the single, ceaseless, screaming thought you are nothing but a worthless piece of shit when really, you’ve just been broken all along. It’s also invisible. Curled lashes and a pop of pink blush fool even myself sometimes. Line my eyes and gloss my lips and you might just mistake me for somebody important.

***

My love affair with makeup began early. I grew up in the 80s on Long Island with a strip mall drugstore but a five-minute, ten-speed ride away. The cosmetics aisle ran its entire left side, lit up with display lights calling me home. I’d begin at Revlon and work my way down, reaching and crouching every few steps so as not to miss a thing: L’Oreal… Maybelline… CoverGirl… Almay… by the time I got to Sally Hansen, I’d be sweating. The Wet n Wild kiosk was my final hurrah, so rebellious, standing off on its own. I felt tingly just being in its presence as I sensed its offerings could make me look stronger than I was.

My body failed me publicly for the first time I can recall in September 1985. It was my freshman year of high school, cheerleading tryouts. My thyroid busted the summer prior, and I was a mess (note constituent, “Graves’ disease”). I tanked. My arms shook convulsively from the moment I began, my legs failed to take flight. My friends, seated on the gymnasium floor directly in front of me, looked like they were watching a train wreck in slow motion. The humiliation was doubly deep as I’d been a co-captain the year prior. I didn’t make the cut.

All was not lost. I had my thyroid blasted with radioactive iodine and scored a spot on the kickline dance team as a sophomore. The KicKats, we were called — like the Rockettes but with Solid Gold flavor. We performed routines during halftime at home football and basketball games to songs like “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off” by Jermaine Stewart and Ready for the World’s “Oh Sheila.” My favorite was to Thelma Houston’s ’76, magnum opus, “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” I kicked and split and dazzled my way through every note of every number. I was voted “Friendliest” senior year.

I brought the whole package north in ’89 to major in psychology at the University of New Hampshire. I was a stand out from the get-go, socially speaking. A Long Island Jew (née Berger) with big hair and a bigger mouth was not a commonality on campus. I dated a lovely gentleman from Fairfield, Connecticut and attended his fraternity’s high-class cocktail parties in fitted dresses and full lips.

Post-college, I moved to the Big Apple to study acting. I find this fascinating, in hindsight. I was already doing it full time. I stayed true to my drugstore roots as there were many within blocks of my tiny walk-up on 27th’s eastside. Every once in a while, however, I’d find myself standing directly in front of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Their beauty department was on the main floor, street level. Entering from broad daylight felt like slipping into the saloon of my dreams. The air was thick with powder and tasted like miracles; the buzz intoxicating. I’d spend more than I had every time, incapable of putting a price tag on hope or possibility.

Once home, I’d linger in the ritual of unwrapping my goods: the gift size shopping bag with silky rope string handles, the layers of white tissue, the unbrushed eyeshadows, the unbruised lipsticks…for me, it was a holy experience.

Over the years, through much trial and error, I curated a small collection I considered my essentials. I kept them in a cosmetic pouch that accompanied me in whatever bag I was carrying on any day I left home. Worn from wear, the pouch itself was replaced occasionally, but the power of its contents never wavered. If I can look it, I can be it. I held onto it like I could not live without it.

I held onto it in ’96 when I sought help from a renowned gynecologist, whose book on endometriosis (constituent) I’d read and reread. I was sure he could fix me. I sat in his Park Avenue waiting room for an hour and a half before my first appointment only to catch his glances as I described the severity of my pelvic pain during it.

At my second, he suggested he perform a laparoscopy which would allow him, via a small abdominal incision, to look for and remove any scar tissue or lesions found within. I was desperate. We set the date.

I was knocked out by the anesthesiologist before I ever laid eyes on my doctor. I don’t remember a thing. He made a brief appearance as I was coming to, told me everything had gone “very well,” and sent me on my way.

A week later, in the middle of my follow-up examination, determining myself fixed and himself the savior, he told me I could go and “make babies now.” I thought I’d misunderstood. His hand was still inside of me and I’d never mentioned babies. As he removed his rubber gloves and tossed them in the trash, he made it clear I hadn’t.

“Go home, have sex tonight,” he said. “Lucky guy.”

I held onto it a few years later at an appointment with my new primary care physician. I was living in Massachusetts with my soon-to-be first husband. We’d recently taken over a clothing boutique in a bustling and eclectic town just outside of Boston. Though I’d spent my entire existence catapulting between magic hours and lifeless days, running a retail business exacerbated the swings tenfold. I was “on” when at work (kept my pouch under the front counter for touch-ups between regulars) and fetal everywhere else. I mentioned to the physician that I’d recently read a book about fibromyalgia and thought there was a possibility I might have it.

“Oh, I hope not,” she said earnestly, as she gathered her things and walked towards the door.

I held onto it ten years later when both my marriage and our business fell apart.

I held onto it at 38 when I accepted an entry-level retail position with a high-end, athleisure wear company opening a new location nearby. Business boomed from the get-go. The pace on the sales floor was lightning speed, the vibe festive. Customer interaction was a huge part of the job and at that, I was a natural.

Along with the retail responsibilities, employees were expected to attend a multitude of complimentary athletic classes each week at a variety of yoga studios and gyms within proximity. The concept was to wear and build the brand in surrounding communities while staying fit all the while. It was considered a major employee perk which it was, just not for one with fibromyalgia. I fled my first (and only) hot yoga class 10 minutes in for fear of death. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep up.

I held onto it as a showroom designer for a large furniture retailer in New England, five years later. I decorated the vignettes on display at their flagship location which covered three floors and roughly 80,00 square feet. It was creatively and physically challenging in a way that made me feel free. I had a tool bag and a tool belt and access to floor-to-ceiling warehouse aisles filled with home accessories. I spent the days riding elevators and running stairs and bringing artwork and lamps and mirrors and rugs and artificial trees wherever needed. I styled bookshelves and sideboards and coffee tables and bureaus and nightstands and dining tables and hutches. I dressed up king beds and queen beds and bunk beds and daybeds, and sofa beds, should you have guests. I decluttered and reorganized and tore the place apart until I could no longer. I still wear the jeans, split at the knees and shredded in the thighs, to remind me.

I held onto it during an appointment with my endocrinologist, nearly 20 years after the one with my PCP. I told her, with both conviction and desperation, that I strongly suspected I had fibromyalgia. She clouded over, said it was a “wastebasket illness,” said it didn’t exist.

I held onto it until my body broke for good.

***

For the better part of the past four and a half years, my favorite, black, Herschel Supply tote bag has been hanging on a hook rack over my bedroom closet door. It is facing outward, flanked by the hoodies I choose daily instead. My cosmetic pouch, now a dusky blue, floral LeSportsac, remains at its bottom. I have not had the energy to conceal my pain. I have not had the energy to do much of anything. I’ve been dismantled. I am disabled.

In weeks of late, however, whispers from my angels have grown louder.

“There is beauty in being dismantled,” they tell me. “One can rebuild if she so chooses.”

And just last night, when the house fell still, I ordered myself a brand new lip color from Clinique; “Pudgy Peony.” The reviews are off the charts. It’s sure to be a game-changer.

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The Prevalence of Depression Among Fibromyalgia Sufferers