It’s a fairly innocuous question isn’t it? Yet, I find it’s one I shy away from being asked and it can cause an awkward pause in the conversation. My static answer for folks who know me well, will be “Pass..next question please.”

I think its my weakness, a foible. But if anyone asks me how I am, I can either go into great detail of what kind or degree of torture my body is in that day, , or I can say in a sentence my pain is rubbish today, or I feel trash, and yet, what does it mean to them in the way of understanding, unless they also have a similar type of disease with similar symptoms? Pain is a word most people understand, yet, most people will never understand my experience of pain. The porphyria doctors who says its a worse pain than malignant cancer I can well believe, because it has more than one type of what is classed as malignant pain in it, and its from head to toe. So if I say I am in pain, what does that tell anyone? What context does it have? Do they think about when they have toothache or some other severe pain? How on god’s green earth can they have context? What good does it do?

My body is a challenge, every minute of every day, even as I sleep. But it’s not a challenge you or most people are likely to ever understand, even if Lord forbid, one day you are struck by terminal cancer.

I hate being asked how are you, because there is no answer that is either adequate or meaningful in what it conveys to the questioner in what I answer. I feel very alone in my mind, even when with most people. Some people have a knack of making me feel more alone when they are there, than when I am actually alone. Me telling anyone anything that has no context to be understood, is just another sore that way. So my static answer will always be, “Pass, next question, please.”