The Many Faces of Endometriosis Pain: A Story from Inside the Storm

It doesn’t live in a single place or follow a predictable pattern.

It has moods. It has timing. It has memory.

If you’ve never lived inside it, it’s hard to understand.

If you have, you know exactly what I mean.

This is what it feels like—from the inside

The Wave

The first pain I learned to fear was The Wave.

It doesn’t arrive gently.

There’s no polite warning. No time to prepare.

It hits you like a massive wall of water—sudden, crushing, unstoppable. One moment you’re standing, the next you’re dragged under. It steals your breath. Your muscles lock. Your vision narrows. Your body forgets how to function.

You try to stay upright, but the undertow pulls you down anyway.

Just when you think you can’t survive another second, it releases you. You surface. You gasp. You cling to whatever strength you have left.

There’s a pause.

A cruel pause.

Because you know what’s coming next.

Another wave.

Sometimes bigger. Sometimes sharper.

Always worse than the one before.

This cycle repeats—over and over—until something inside you breaks. Not just physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. It reaches places pain should never reach.

And when it’s finally over, you’re left injured, shaken, hollowed out. Trying to recover from something that will never truly be gone—because it comes back. Every month. Like clockwork. Dragging you back into the same hell, again and again.

Young woman resting in bed.

The Aftermath:

The Recovery Week

People think the pain ends when the flare ends.

It doesn’t.

The first week after a flare isn’t living—it’s recovering.

Your body feels like it ran a marathon you never trained for. Muscles ache.

Your pelvis feels bruised from the inside out. Fatigue clings to you like wet clothes.

This is the week you rebuild enough strength to function. Not thrive—function.

Every task costs something. A shower. A meal. Answering a text. You ration energy like it’s a limited resource, because it is.

You’re healing from a war no one saw.

The One Good Week

Then there it is.

The one good week.

The week you almost feel human again.

You’re still broken down. Still weak. Still careful. But the pain loosens its grip just enough to breathe. To move. To imagine life outside your home.

This is the week you try to live.

You might go to the grocery store. Visit a friend. Step into the world just to remind yourself you still exist in it.

You park in a disability spot—not because you want to, but because you need to. Most days you can’t walk far at all. On good days, you can walk a little—but only if you don’t push it. Push it, and you’ll pay later. Deeply.

You step out of the car, hopeful.

And then someone stops you.

They lecture you.

They judge you.

They decide—based on how you look—that you don’t belong there.

In that moment, the joy of being out disappears. You shrink. You question yourself. You feel guilty for surviving long enough to have a good day.

Or maybe instead of the store, you visit a friend. Someone who casually jokes. Makes a comment. Something small—but it lands heavy.

“You seem fine today.”

“I wish I could stay home like you do.”

“Must be nice.”

And suddenly you wonder if they think you’re lazy. Exaggerating. Making excuses.

Because today, you look okay.

So they assume every day must look like this.

The Invisible Days

What they don’t see are the bad days.

They don’t see you curled up on the bathroom floor.

They don’t see the nausea, the cold sweats, the shaking fatigue that makes lifting your head feel impossible.

They don’t see the storm raging inside your body—the pain, the inflammation, the exhaustion, the brain fog, the emotional weight.

You close the world out on those days because you have to.

And then, when you reappear—on that one good week—you’re punished for it.

Punished for trying to live. Punished for using your good days. Punished for not looking sick enough.

This is the cruel paradox of endometriosis:

Your worst days are invisible.

Your best days are misunderstood.

The Warning Pain

After the good week comes the warning.

The pain doesn’t slam into you yet—it creeps. Slowly. Quietly. Like a shadow stretching longer each day.

A twinge here.

A dull ache there.

That familiar heaviness settling back in.

Your body whispers what’s coming.

You know the wave is forming again. You start cancelling plans. Preparing mentally. Stockpiling medications, heating pads, comfort items.

And even as the pain grows, so does the fear.

Because you know what it will become.

Dark clouds rolling in.

The Full Storm

By the time the storm hits, it’s never just pain.

It’s pain plus nausea.

Pain plus crushing fatigue.

Pain plus emotional exhaustion.

It’s your body screaming while the world keeps moving.

You mourn the life you could be living if your body didn’t betray you monthly.

You grieve relationships strained by misunderstanding. You question your worth when productivity becomes impossible.

And still—you endure.

Because Endo warriors don’t get a choice.

What We Wish the World Knew

Endometriosis pain isn’t dramatic.

It isn’t exaggerated.

It isn’t just “bad periods.”

It is cyclical trauma.

It is living inside a body that turns

against you again and again.

It is being strong not because you want to be—but because you must.

And on the days we show up—on the rare good days—we aren’t “fine.”

We are surviving.

💛

For every Endo warrior navigating waves, storms, and judgment—your pain is real. Your experience matters. And you are not alone.