Dealing with your Chronic Disease as Juggling a Backpack

How to regard your disease
Do you have a disease?: Are you the Appendix at 11 o'clock? Or Mrs. Thomas that needs to talk about pain management?; If you see a lot of doctors, if you need regular therapy, if you confront your limits daily, you know what I mean. The overwhelming feeling you and the disease (or handicap) are one.
Or does the disease have you?: Or even worse is the feeling:
You don't have that disease; the disease has you.
And yet sometimes you completely forget about your disease.
Confronted with your disease: You play chess with your best friend.
You sing or dance or stroll the city.
Than you meet an old acquaintance and he keeps pushing questions about your disease and nothing else seems to interest him.
You mood changes rapidly... Your disease is choking you again.
I know only one escape. And to me it works perfect.
I regard my diseases as a backpack. I always have to take it with me.: I use this image in my mind.
At a backpack you can scowl, you can kick it, yell at it, cry over it. Even though it is only in your mind.
Heavy backpack: Sometimes its filled with bricks. Sometimes I feel I am happily descending a mountain waving my pack. Sometimes I carry it in front letting it block my view. Now and than someone notices how cool I restyled my backpack.
Which backpack?: Now and than I hide it and pretend it doesn't exist. Backpack? Which backpack? Ah, that one! I ignore it, it weighs nothing. Oh, and sometimes it feels so light.; And sometimes someone offers to carry it for me a bit.
These thoughts are somehow comforting.
It helps me to just be me. Same old me, just always carrying a backpack now.

Juggling your backpack