This is going to involve a lot of things that are difficult to articulate even for me, so please bear with me.
I’ve been feeling very… floaty lately. Like I am not really here. Instead, it feels like I am floating through the world like a neutrally buoyant balloon, not really truly touching anything, helpless in the breeze.
Now that I have become conscious of this floaty feeling, I realize it’s been building up slowly for a long time.
Yet another deadly health hazard that stalked me like a very patient predator, making sure not to have any clear, undeniable symptoms until it was far too late.
Even now, it’s a subtle and vague thing. It could still be entirely imaginary. I might just be reading too much into minor symptoms like any other recovering hypochondriac.
I don’t think so, though. It’s too consistent and persistent.
It really became apparent when I got out of the car to do my shopping last night. I felt very dizzy and it felt like the world was flooding away from me. My skin tingled all over and I felt a lurch in my stomach like I was in a high speed elevator that had just jerked into motion. That made me feel nauseous, unsurprisingly.
And that got me thinking about how this feeling of surreality has been building for a long time. My life is so unreal by default that it took me a long time to notice.
I mean, I spend all my time in front of this computer, mentally inhabiting its world via video games, Reddit, and blogging.
I have next to nothing to do with reality at all.
This is not an accident. I only feel safe in my virtual world, where I am in control of the stimulation level and feel competent and effective instead of incompetent and worthless.
I know that paints a less than heroic picture of me. I am scared of the world so I hide from it. The enormous burden of pain I carry leaves me precious little wherewithal witch which to struggle and strive and achieve.
No matter how badly I need to do so.
Crap. OK, back to the floaty feeling.
I’m getting better! I remembered the topic! Eventually!
It has me quite worried because I fear that it might be a sign that my peripheral neuropathy has shifted into high gear and my nervous system is dying from the surface of the skin inwards.
IT would make sense. I am still not controlling my diabetes properly. I am still without working glucometer to do so with. I need to call the pharmacy to see if I am due for another pack of sensors yet.
And I often get random intense pains of various sorts in various places. Burning, stabbing, wrenching. freezing, you name it, it’s hit me out of the blue.
Usually lasts less than five minutes. But it’s still a pretty bad sign.
And I know this should galvanize me into action. It should give me a pressing need to do everything I can to make sure I don’t die a horrible neurological death.
But it doesn’t. I’m still too sick in my head to deal with how I am sick in my bed.
That enormous indigestible lump of pain within me still paralyzes me when I try to act on my own behalf, and until I find a way to rid myself of that, I am going to keep drifting towards that big ol waterfall up there.
I am going to end up in my worst nightmare : buried alive in my own body, unable to move, tubes down my throat to make me breathe, going absolutely insane but not even able to make a sound, let alone scream.
Man that’s gonna suck.
More after the break.
Otaku’s hearts go “lub sub, lub sub”.
Well, I am, anyhow.
My mother and my brother live here.
I miss them a lot.
I’m sure they occasionally recall my absence too.
Burn bitch burn!
I’m in the mood to fricassee in my own grease tonight.
Time to burn like the bitch I am. I am sick of fighting the pain. It’s not worth it. Fighting it hurts more than the pain itself in the long run.
Better to just let the goddamned forest fire happen so it can clear out all the old brush and dried leaves and make way for new, healthy growth.
So fuck it, spark it up, clear out the deadwood, and get things going.
The big pain that I call my Wound hurts like hell. Let’s just sit with that pain a while. Resist the urge to suppress or dodge it and let it rage away unabated.
See, that’s not so bad. Sure, it hurts, both in and of itself and via that strange cold feeling I get in my chest when I am dealing with my shit.
But we want that cold feeling. Because it indicates progress. That’s the sensation of some of the ice around my heart melting and slipping away, like icebergs calving off the edge of a glacier.
It doesn’t feel good. It’s painful and icky and weird. Before I recognized this pain for what it was, I was pretty freaked out by it.
But now I know it’s progress. So bring it on.
The more I melt, the more I heal. So turn up the heat.
I’ll take it all. Embarrassment. Shame. Anxiety. Fear. Dread. And that nameless terror that drives compulsion and makes you feel like something terrible is going to happen.
Sign me the fuck up. I’m both frustrated and numb enough to volunteer. It’ll be worth the pain just to feel alive for a fucking change.
The only thing worse than feeling bad is feeling nothing.
Feeling pain means you’re alive.
Feeling nothing means you’re dead.
And on the whole, I’d rather be alive.
Most of the time, anyhow.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.