Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live without chronic pain.

Usually I don't feel terribly different from most people. The chronic pain is simply a troublesome tenant, usually keeping to itself with small problems here and there. And now, I'm used to the small problems. Occasional stiffness, soreness, it's normal.

I really only feel like an arthritic person when the pain flares, gets unbearable. When I wake up in enough pain where I have trouble moving or when I can barely type for the swelling, I feel arthritic. But usually, it's just normal. Life. The occasional pain is noticeable if I look for it, but I never do.

However, sometimes I realize just how this affects my life. I've forgotten what it's like to live without hurting. The feeling of nothing being stiff, or the absence of the gentle, radiating ache that I've accepted as part of me, is something I honestly don't experience often, if at all. Whether I realize it or not, the pain is a constant companion, a part of my day, my week, my life. It follows me, lives my life with me, grows with me.

I don't know what it's like to have it not be there.

At times, I realize just how different my life might be from others'. I realize that most people don't begin to live with pain at sixteen years old. And, as much as I loathe to admit it, it makes me bitter. I can't count the times that my arthritis has stopped me from being as active as I'd like to be, from doing all I want to.

Regularly, I have to stop my writing or sketching or knitting because it'll just make the pain unbearable. When I look back at all these times, I wonder what I could have achieved, who I could have become, even just in the two years that I've dealt with arthritis.

And it's discouraging to look ahead and know that these setbacks might just continue because the treatments just make life easier. They don't make it perfect. I'll never be the "normal" person that I was before.

But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Even though I have to stop doing many of my favorite activities at intervals to accommodate my joints, even though some things are harder, even though the pain can make my life a lot harder, it doesn't mean that I can't be a wonderful, amazing person. The pain has taken some things from me, sure, but it's given me others.

It's taught me resilience, it's taught me how to understand my limits. It's taught me to not get discouraged when life gets harder.

And even though I wouldn't choose this struggle, I'll learn its lessons gladly.