(Image from Rebirth Tarot Card)
Fuck. Inspiration is being fickle tonight. This is the third draft I’m starting and I don’t know where it’s going. I have two solid starts but I don’t have the conclusions for them yet.
TW: mentions of illness and suicidal ideation
I have been struggling with undiagnosed illness for a long time. Right now it seems like at long last I am getting better. But we are talking about years lost. During that time I have gotten really good at distraction as a coping mechanism. This era is really the right time to be into distractions! There were nights where I would realize I was watching (barely) something on tv, playing a game on my iPad, and scrolling Facebook on my phone. Now that I’m doing better I have been catching myself falling into the distraction traps out of habit rather than necessity.
At my sickest I was throwing up every day and spending at least five days a week in bed. I felt like a burden to my family. I wasn’t working, I wasn’t even strong enough to stand up long enough to cook a complete meal. On the rare occasions that I did try to cook I would bring a bar stool into the kitchen so I could perch. Every day that I existed felt like a chore with no pleasure and no hope. Even when I found a doctor who started helping me it was keeping track of supplements and medication and dietary restrictions. Not to mention managing appointments and testing and health insurance. All things that are difficult to do when healthy. Add to that brain fog and struggles with memory. Not only did I not feel like myself anymore some days I didn’t even feel human.
On the darkest days I didn’t want to keep going. I didn’t want to keep trying to get better. It was too much work and what’s the point? I didn’t feel like I had a life to fight for. I remember one night it was late and I was hungry. I went downstairs to the kitchen and there wasn’t anything I could grab and eat. I just sat on the floor and cried and cried because I knew I didn’t have the energy to actually make myself something. Then I got up and went to bed hungry.
Then there were the times when I had issues with my medication. I had at least one medication that made the suicidal ideation worse. The times when the cure was worse than the illness. Some things made the nausea worse or the nausea medication that made me painfully constipated. It seemed like if it wasn’t one thing it was something else.
Here’s the part that I hesitate to write…. deep breath. There is still a part of me that feels some regret (for lack of a better way to put it) that I didn’t end my own life. Don’t get me wrong, in my little bubble things are night and day different and I feel more alive and happier than I’ve been in years. The last time I vomited it was due to missing my medication. I’m able to cook for my family. I’ve been working more. I started this blog. I’ve been sewing. I’ve been putting more energy into making my home someplace I want to be. I’ve been riding my scooter a lot. Things are good. But if I look too far outside my bubble the hopelessness threatens to swallow me again. I see the orchestrated division in this country. I see so much suffering all around me. I see climate change. I see drought. I see fire. I see seemingly endless shootings. I see the housing and homelessness crisis. I see the struggles of women. I see the struggles of the LGBTQ community. Black Lives Matter. Indigenous peoples. And more and more and more. It all threatens to pull me back down.
I’ve been called overly sensitive in my life and maybe I am. But I feel these things, like actually feel them. Yes, at the end of the day someone I don’t know losing their home in a wildfire in no way effects me. A child being denied an abortion after she’s been raped in no real way changes my day. But it breaks my heart. So do the millions of people who died of COVID, many alone in hospital beds not able to say goodbye to their family. So do the animals we are losing. I’m an emotional sponge and sometimes moving through the world hurts. Me being who I am I want to jump in and fix it all and it’s so far beyond me to fix these things and then the helplessness sets in.
On a small scale I’m working on my impulse to jump in and fix everything. Earlier today my granddaughter texted me about something that happened and she was upset. My brain instantly jumped to multiple ideas and solutions that I wanted to offer her. I wanted to fix it and take away her pain and upset. I made a conscious choice to swallow all of that and as her “what do you need?” It wasn’t easy. And it’s what I want from the people around me when I’m suffering. Ask me what I need.
But where are you supposed to start when you see a broken world? Who do you ask “what do you need?”
I want this post to have a satisfying conclusion, an answer, a call to action. But I don’t have one. That is why I still allow myself to be pulled into distraction. It’s working for now but I really hope I find something I can do that will actually make a meaningful difference in the world. I hope we all do.
Screaming in the Dark 