Slop.

My partner has fibromyalgia. It fluctuates between medium-mild pain and catastrophically debilitating pain. It never goes away. It doesn't help that my partner is also autistic, but that is beside the point.

I am an able-bodied person. I have unlearned a lot of bad ways of dealing with disability by being with my partner (for which I am immensely grateful and appaled at my own self-centeredness). So I understand not being able to grasp a lot of the difficulty and confusion that comes with the fluctuation of symptons. One day, my partner can go rollerskating just fine. The other, they can't get out of bed. It's strange and frustrating, most of all for the person going through it, but for the people around them also.

What doesn't help is that the first question that comes up, when people are faced with this confusion, is about whether or not the pain is real. About whether the person is faking it for attention.

My partner struggled with pain for years. You know what helped? Knowing what it was. Before being diagnosed, the pain was a great unknown, tragedy that could strike at any moment. With the diagnosis, fibromyalgia sucks, but can be dealt with. At worst, my partner can understand that they will have to cancel plans because the pain will probably continue.

An article like this is heinous, simply cruel. It spits on the face of people who go through the most difficult lives of this most difficult time in history. It plays pain for a fancy. And, mostly, it helps absolutely no one, by shaming those that try to cope with the pain.