Tired Soup

I can't think it out so I sit down to write. Can't write so I'll give it up to something else. Write me. Write through me. Carry me, I cannot walk.

I don't want to write about being sick any more than I want to be sick. At first being sick makes me mad - so damn inconvenient, espeicially during the holidays. Weeks go by and I am past mad. I am defeated, down. Another week passes and I am afraid, waking in the middle of the night, weeping.

How is it that we can be so in the dark about what happens in our own body? Amazing if you think about it.

You know the regular sort of deal during illness: if I get better I will be more mindful about this and that and, right, that other thing, too. And then comes the private pleading, appeals that head toward prayer. Prayer starts in the night, when I think I can't take anymore and then I do.

If this is a mountainous region, I try to find my way in my simple jeep. But around every turn, another unexpected visitor.

In four weeks I've had the flu, a womping yeast infection which turned to a bladder infection. Then a brush with toxic shock and staph. If that's not bad enough, I started fertility drugs. One day of reprieve, then a horrible respiratory infection. Coughing that doesn't end.

I drive myself to the ER early yesterday morning. I wait hours with a schizophrenic, Hannibal Lector, guy ranting on and on. Then I make it to the part where I get to lay on a gurney for another few hours, now with the HL dude next to me, divided by a thin curtain, whispering horrible, horrible things to me. At one point, after they had me take off my clothes and wait in the 'gown', he opens the curtain and screams, "What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you? Have you been raped? Should I rape your daughter then cut her up and eat her at MacDonald's!"

They move me to another room next to a guy who tried to OD because he can't take living on the streets for a seventh year with HIV. For another few hours I listen to his self-talk about more horrible, horrible things.

And I think: Why am I here? What is this really all about?

I felt so relived and grateful to drive home after eight hours at the hospital, though all I left with was a prescription for cough syrup. I'm sure I will pay several thousand dollars for that cough syrup visit. Everything was getting better as I washed off the day, until I couldn't see straight out of one eye. I came home with Pink Eye! Of all things! WTF.

I lost it today - only I can't cry because then I cough and I look pathetic enough with my crooked glasses and cracked lips. I crawled up to bed last night at 9pm, oblivious to the New Year. So mad for more suffering and that I have to worry about River catching yet another infection from me.

That's my gripe. Phew.

I know people struggle every day with far worse conditions - it's just so hard to endure on-going pain and suffering in the body. So lonely. When appearance fades and all the things that hold up my identity retreat....who am I then? It's all nice to practice in a meditation retreat, but rather frightening when suddenly it's just taken away without warning.

We were planning to go away for my birthday this weekend, but the place burned down three days ago. See?? It's make you wonder, doesn't it? And last night we cancelled the birthday dinner - I'd like to be able to breathe and taste my food when I celebrate.

If I said it was getting quiet before, it's now quiet. Aside from the occassional fit of tears, I am remembering that zero feeling - when I've cried it all out and I am just me - all the way down and all the way back and ever-present.

Metamorphosis. The butterfly moalts down to soup. How long is that waiting between the old and the new?