Sometimes it all seems perfectly fair. Not so much the bigger picture, although there is a temptation to build some poetry around that. Like the idea that illness is the only bit of tremendous bad luck I have really had in my life and I need this in order to balance out all the good stuff. But I know that’s crap. None of us get a fair share of good or bad luck; I could just as easily imagine it was a karma, a test from God or some much. Or that I needed to get sick in order to fulfil some destiny or other. Nope, the bigger picture isn’t fair or orderly, it simply is.
But the day-to-day, sometimes that all seems perfectly fair. This is really about stability as opposed to fairness. Times when whatever I do, I have a good idea how much its going to cost me. I walk the distance between here and there and I know how much it will hurt, how long it will hurt for and how many times I can do it without causing myself trouble tomorrow. Brain stuff too, to a more limited extent. Cause and effect. Consumption and expenditure, of a kind.
And at such times, it seems fair, even though it is a bit rubbish compared to the deal most people enjoy. Enjoy - now there’s an interesting word. Well, not terribly interesting, but I do think that it is enjoyable when life is so orderly. Pain and fatigue are not all bad; I remember it being nice to ache after you have done something worth aching for and there was a certain satisfied sleepiness at the end of an exciting or productive day. There still is, sometimes. Like a sprain acquired during a outlandish sexual experiment that makes you giggle every time it twinges. I should imagine.
When it seems terribly unfair, it does so for the silliest reasons. Like sometimes I have gone out somewhere or done something social when I knew full well what it would cost me, but it wasn't really worth it. I didn't get enough fun out of it to feel like this afterwards. And often I am most frustrated, not during relapse, but whenmy health is doing relatively well. Just not quite well enough to do as much as I feel I ought to be able to do.
Which I guess is where I am just now, really. A wave of fog, but not a nasty discombobulating one. I'm just struggling to write or do anything much useful. It's only been a few days and it'll pass soon enough. What's more, I am not suffering at all; I have been reading lots, watching films, painting a bit (badly, I made a terrible mess actually; I wasn't really well enough to try). I have read five books this month so far, which strike's me as a little excessive. But I really want to feel like I'm getting somewhere. Six weeks time it'll be the middle of the year already. And that's not fair.
No, I know, not much of a post as an exercise in stringing words together into sentences. I shall now go and do something else pleasant on this sunny afternoon whilst the rest of the world is at work. Poor me.
5 comments:
Being stuck at home makes you feel so detached. I've only been here for a fortnight or so, but for the girlfriend it's been months and months. As you say, it's probably the frustration which is the most overiding thing, but she still copes with it as you are doing.
Five books is alot though.
I wish I was at work, so I could sit at my desk and wish I was at home...
My sympathy, Goldfish. It's no fun to feel that you've wasted something (energy) you don't have enough of to begin with.
Hope tomorrow's a better day for ya.
As well as the obvious things that are frustrating (sometimes to the point of frightening) and, dammit, not fair, there is the loss of a sense of omnipotence. We (and its harder for you younger ones) know that we are not in control of our day, our health, our lives; whereas the general population carry on getting up, getting on, thinking they have a say in what happens to them, or never giving it a thought. We have no choice but to keep on analysing it, trying to make some sense of it, in order to live with it, that which accompanies us, uninvited.
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