I am in hell. I am in the hell that afflicts two year olds and 15 year olds and 90 year olds. I am in the hell that afflicts people whose brains are ready to do things but their bodies can't keep up.
I am feeling better. Much better. I have been doing stretching exercises for about a week and the difference has been profound. My need for pain meds has decreased radically. My ability to actually get around in the world, using both hands and arms, has increased to a point where I rarely need to compensate for my clipped wing. The relief from constant pain is fantastic; it no longer consumes my brain and I no longer watch the clock closely waiting for the next opportunity to throw something into my body hoping it will do the trick.
So what's the problem, Kathy?
The problem is that I'm feeling better. And with that feeling better comes the awareness that there are things that I need to do. Life things. Admin things. Help around the house things. Bill paying things. Work things. Side job things. The mountain of responsibilities has not diminished while I've been sitting around taking pain killers. Instead, it's grown. And as I've been feeling better, I've been trying to gently ease back into the slow lane of life, taking up some of the slack once again.
Hell.
It's hell. I see what needs to be done. I feel its weight crushing down on me. I have emails and folders and maintenance tasks, all staring me in the face. I LITERALLY have a DOG staring me in the face as well. (Sam has become very fond of our twice-daily walks.) I have this whole wonderful vast life I lead... just... waiting for me to take it on a walk, and maintain it, and come back to it.
And I just can't. I don't have the juice. I just don't have the juice for self care and self maintenance and household maintenance and work maintenance and anything maintenance. I have maybe two hours in me before I feel crushed by fatigue and depression and helplessness. I then sleep for two hours. I then wake up and try to do something, and then in an hour I'm crushed again. Then I try to push through it and in 15 minutes I am just ready to cry. And then in 5 minutes I do cry.
This is Kathy's version of hell. Being able to do it, and not being able to do it.
Now, I know. Everyone says just don't do so much. To which I say: great. Tell me how to do that. Please. Tell me how to do that. I have offloaded everything I can. Roger is doing all the housework, the cooking, the shopping, the laundry. I could not possibly do less around the house. I am working from home in tiny bits and pieces. I am trying, desperately, to disengage from as much as I can. But the disengaging takes energy and time. I am trying to delegate, but the delegating takes energy and time. It's like trying to run a machine on, like, an ounce of gasoline. It takes six hours to build up that ounce and then about half an hour to use it up. Do I use that ounce to tell someone else how to do something, or do I use it to actually just do the thing itself?
In the midst of this hell, comes a huge dollop of sadness verging on despair. I look at the eyes of my dog and think, god damn, this dog is going to die someday and I'm going to be filled with regret for every moment I did not spend walking him and doing the few very simple things that I am able to do make him profoundly content. I am suffused with the poignant pain of how transient this all is. We are all so beautiful and tough talking and so very very fragile. We have things growing in us, mortality creeping behind us like a constant shadow, and it will win. It will. We will say good bye to all the things we have ever loved before we're through with this. We will dance our last dance, we will type our last words, we will kiss our last kiss, we will breathe our last breath. This is a truth that we can never escape. And we're super good at not having to think about it constantly, otherwise I am sure we would go quite mad.
This is usually stuff that seeps through around 4 in the morning. But, in my current state, I am inundated with it constantly. This is the form this fatigue is taking: an acutely painful and constant awareness of my fragility and the futility of it all. I will never take care of myself well enough to avoid the inevitable, I will never walk Sam enough to show him how much I love him, I will never tell the people I love that I love them enough. I will never write enough words, listen to enough music, watch enough curtains opening, laugh enough with dear friends. It will never be enough.
Excruciating. All of this.
And as I was walking this morning a single word came into my mind. Followed by a few others. There is no antidote to these kinds of painful thoughts and feelings. But there are ways to get through. And the first word that came to me is kindness. Kindness, my god. If we could all be a tiny bit kinder, to ourselves and each other, how much better would we feel about all this darkness that we can barely keep at bay during daylight hours? Kindness. It would save us all so very much pain if we could just do a bit more of it.
And art. Art is the binding agent that gives this all some semblance of meaning. One of our great saving graces (and our greatest weakness) is this marvelous intuitive sensitive brain and heart of ours. Our creative souls weave stories and paint pictures and sing music and create plays about this time we have on the planet... and without that, what kind of spiritual void would we be forced to live within? Art. It makes it all almost tolerable.
And friends. Finally, the friends, the people. The social ties that give us people to talk to and cry on and argue with. What would we do without the people around us? We are all in this crazy boat together. We are linked profoundly and when one of us hurts, we all hurt. Which means when one of us heals, we all heal as well. For better or worse, we are all dancing the same dance.
So, please. Let's treat each other with a little more kindness. And revel in our abilities to create and enjoy art. And try to find meaning and laughter and even a certain macabre delight in this somewhat horrible and beautiful hand we've been dealt.
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