Or so I have been told.
Mine good days are, at best, semiprecious stones. Relatively suffering free. Comparatively low on misery, Somewhat pleasant, considering.
Oh right. Swift medical update : I will be seeing Doc Chao in person Friday at 9:30 am.
The phone appointment went… okay. He at least seemed to basically grasp the seriousness of my condition.
On the plus side, I didn’t lose my shit on him. Though that’s still an option.
On the other hand, I still went away unsatisfied. So now I have to ask myself what exactly I was looking for.
Rescue, basically. Both physical and emotional. I wanted him to swoop in and reassure me that he knew what was wrong with me and he had it all under control now and everything was going to be okay.
This whole degeneration has been extremely painful and scary and depressing and has left me feeling like I am barely surviving The Blitz a lot of the time, and I could really use some high quality hand holding and reassurance right about now.
But no. As usual, I have to deal with everything all alone. I am doomed to forever be the baby left to cry, with nobody to come to my rescue when I am in pain.
How much of that is people not being there and how much is me not being able to see the ones that ARE there, or let them in, is a matter for debate.
Certainly, on the most basic level, a strong tendency to respond to trauma by withdrawing into oneself does not exactly send strong “help me!” signals.
I mean, the whole point of withdrawing is to NOT be noticed. To disappear from public view so you can safely turn inward and curl up into a ball around your wound.
Because that’s the only way you know how to heal.
Healing that involves other people has never seemed like an option to you. The idea of going to someone with your problems died in you a very long time ago.
You tried that. Nobody gave a shit. They just wanted you to leave them alone.
Even back then, when you were in elementary school, people just did not want to deal with you. So obviously, they were not going to spend any more time with me than they were absolutely forced to, and so the game was clearly to get rid of me as quickly and cleanly as possible.
Parents, teachers, siblings, didn’t matter who. Something about dealing with me gave people an overwhelming desire to escape.
Had they actually offered me comfort and support, like they were supposed to, that would have meant not only extending their time with me but actually,… shudder… inviting me to get closer to them,
Eww eww eww. Not gonna happen. Nobody wants someone like me to be in their lives at all. Letting me get close enough to talk is more than they can take.
Now some of this is on me and my inconsistent relationship with hygiene. Sometimes I am, quite plainly, pretty damned gross.
But gross people need love too, god damn it.
Then again, maybe the fact that it pushes people away from me is why it keeps being a habit despite the real social penalties.
Maybe on the scared little animal level, I feel like it keeps me safe. Tells people to back the fuck off. Like a skunk.
Wouldn’t that be pathetic?
More after the break.
These are the voyages
Still really sick of every trip to the toilet or the kitchen being an epic journey.
Just got back from the kitchen, and boy are my arms tired.
I mean legs. My legs are tired. So’s the rest of me, come to think of it. These little trips involve more than just pain in my legs.
They also tire me out unreasonably. I mean, I know I have never been very fit and getting old has made that a lot worse, but I should still not be this tired after just going to the kitchen and grabbing a few things from the fridge and refilling my water.
Something’s coming for me. I can feel it.
I find it amusing how this recent downturn in my health is reinforcing my tendency toward sloth and idleness even more than the pandemic did.
It’s like the universe is really against my getting exercise.
It’s not that I don’t want to exercise, exactly. But my depression/anxiety makes me afraid of any kind of effort that might raise my adrenaline level.
Because of course, that might lead to an anxiety attack.
Talk about maladaptive. What an overcorrection! Either anxious or depressed. No chance of spending quality time in the happy middle.
Well I am sick of it. I hereby unstick the middle. I want the pendulum of life to spend time in the middle, and if that means I have to let it swing freely, so be it.
It’s not like being constantly mildly depressed (dysthymia) has done me any good. Maybe introducing some swing to my mood dance is just what I need. .
Maybe normal people experience highs and lows all the time, at least compared to life in my deep freeze of a soul.
And it’s no big deal to them because for them it’s normal.
They are unwitting wise enough not to try to make their mood stay in one place. All that does is make you one of the living dead because that’s not how life for the living works.
Living things are dynamic and fluid, constantly changing as they partake of the flux of the universe. And that is how natural, healthy, robust life lives.
Like I have said here before :
When we seek to stop the wheel’s spin, we only delay our own renewal
someone smart in some book of quotes
So maybe what I really need to do is take the emergency brake off, ease up on brake pedal, and find out what it’s like to really roll.
Beats the hell out of driving around at half a mile an hour to the sounds of squealing metal and the smell of burning brake pads, wondering why I am not getting anywhere.
At least in theory.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.