mintcar

I am laying in bed as I write this. My joints are inflamed and my leg, hip, and lower back muscles are in incredible pain.

I started to think again, as I do everyday, about the situation I am in and when or if I will (or should) move back to New York.

Since about 6 months ago I began to hate every day of my life. I hate living each day without being able to do what I wish without physical discomfort or pain. I hate being away from my friends and loved ones. I hate postponing my dreams without knowing whether or not I would ever be able to resume them. I hate this because I never chose this. I cry every day. I recall a time when it wasn't like this, so I grieve the loss of a time when I didn't to suffer like this. I grieve what it was like to be unburdened by having to daily meticulously plan paths, meals, rest, treatments, preventions. I grieve what it was like to not worry that deviating from this plan won't cause another flare and lead to living with even greater suffering and even greater loss. This is not what people my age are meant to be doing. I feel old. I feel left behind.

Perhaps I have not adapted to this kind of life. Maybe if I adapted I would no longer cry. Perhaps I would no longer complain. But, I don't think so. Everybody suffers, but suffering is in degrees. In this period of my life, and perhaps for years or decades, my physical suffering is and will be greater than that of most of my peers.

Some say to overcome difficult mental and physical states is a matter of mental and inner strength. I would agree. But I doubt anyone is ever truly prepared for or is able to transcend chronic pain and fatigue and the isolation it brings. I might learn to live with it graciously, but not a single day would I ever have wished for this challenge and what it has done to my life. I would not wish this life on my worst enemy.

With this weight, I feel my earlier love of life has slowly dissolved. I feel, as they say, a mere shell of who I was, empty of dreams and empty of aspirations.

Can I learn to love my life? Can I learn to find greater pleasure in small things? When it seems the big things are beyond my grasp?

I am not without hope. Whatever is happening in me now will bear fruit in some dimension. My values hold it true. That I am alive is the truth. Sight, taste, touch, sound, movement ... thought, memory, word.

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