Monday, January 19, 2009

how to discern my own thoughts and feelings from those pouring in from outside. where am I in all of this? what has my ME become? I don't even know what the fuck "me" or "self" mean. identity, yeah--ok. sense of self, the ubiquitous "I" click-clacking around, all thought, prelude to action, absent from REaction, buried in blurred hazes my "I" calls "pain," pain those outside seem to think I've allowed to usurp my me, but I know I KNOW MY ME KNOWS INSIDE I FEEL this pain this interference this l'intrus isn't some fantastical concoction.

it makes me angry, in a way, in a lot of ways, in every way ANGRY can influence my sentiment towards those I love most dearly--ANGRY I AM ANGRY AT THEM. I thought--I expected it from my mom--but it makes me sad now and ANGRY now to admit I'm angry at my dad for his honesty. not angry that he was honest, but angry that--in his own way--he's dismissed and belittled what I'm going through in his own way, which is full of common sense and comes from a place that is nothing but love and care for me, but that I have allowed "this" to take too great a place in my life, that if I just work hard and not think about it anymore it'll just vanish--he really believes that. and I tried to tell him, but dad--it didn't come from stress, it didn't happen because I was upset or depressed--I've been that way for YEARS--it started because of a physical illness, a virus, an invasion, and progressed slowly until it occupied all my me all the time, and that's different. IT'S DIFFERENT, DAMMIT. and I guess I'm saddest that, although he has been so supportive and so THERE for me, still he doesn't understand.

I guess it feels like everything else that's ever been "wrong" with me--my weight, my loserness, my emotional outbursts, my depression, inappropriate remarks, now THIS...THIS THISNESS out of nowhere--it's my fault. MY FAULT. if I just forget about it it'll forget about me; that's what he believes. and this makes me SO ANGRY and SO SAD to be angry at him.

I guess...it just shows again again and again how impossible it is to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced complete and unrelenting chronic pain what it's like, where it comes from. I thought that visit with my doctors might have delivered some revelation. I don't know--I don't know what to do about it. I feel like I can do nothing about it. he thinks I need to grow up--I can't rely on people to take care of me anymore; I'm a grown woman and I have to deal with things on my own. I understand this reasoning, but I'm not asking for my family to hold my hand and do my work and carry me through life--I'm asking for an attempt to GRASP what I'm dealing with, and neither of my parents seem to want to do that. they have their own conclusions, their own conceptions, and it seems there's nothing I can NOR SHOULD do about it.

BUT I DON'T WANT TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. why do I want SO MUCH for them to just try to understand? maybe Steve will talk to my dad for me for a little bit. maybe he can explain this isn't just some wacked mental fixation but a very real physical problem that results in my being in pain at every minute of every day and CAN YOU EVEN GRASP THAT, DAD? CAN YOU? I know you don't want to--I know you don't want to even imagine that your daughter is living like this, but SHE IS. I AM. please, please please please, dad, please...just try, for me. just try.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

My dad said I let this take up too much a part of my life. That if I just refocus my attention will go elsewhere and the pain will disappear. I understand where he's coming from, but I still don't think he understands what dealing with this is like. Today, pure debilitation. Surrounding, enclosing, suffocating pain. No concentration, type and retype, fight the keys, fight the couch, fight the remote, fight the day. All these talks suddenly make me feel like maybe I AM making too big a deal out of this--but then I wonder how one can make such a big deal out of being in pain all day every day every moment no stop unrelenting . . . I don't know of an "overreaction" to living like this. If I had to -- I don't even remember.

How could I hope to explain it to anyone if those supposedly closest to me can't even grasp what I'm feeling? Maybe that's my problem--trying to make people understand. Maybe I need to just suck it in, internalize, keep it to myself. I don't know. I don't know what any "supposed to"s are supposed to be in this situation.

So I'll do my best to just complain to myself, here, alone, in the anonymous binary abyss.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

So shocked. So hurt.
I was told that my mother doesn't believe my pain is as bad as I make it out to be. As in, she thinks I'm exaggerating, blowing it out of proportion . . . making it up?
While I am shocked, I'm not terribly surprised It explains some behavior.
But it's my mother.
My fucking MOTHER.
My own mom doesn't believe me.
And she's seen me at my worst, my lowest points, my deepest pain.

I guess this is why she's refused to help me in the past.
Why she redirects all her "care" towards me into other areas that are full of emotional violence and disregard for my well-being. I guess this is one of the reasons I've been avoiding her.
And it hurts to avoid her
I have no idea . . . I've been agonizing over what I might have done in the past, how I could have led her to this conclusion. Out of all the years I've been dealing with this--all the disbelief, the utter dismissal by doctors and coworkers and bosses and friends--to discover, to KNOW my own mom doesn't really believe me . . .

I'm gutted. Something irreparable has been severed. That tenuous tissue, invisible to the gaze of science and all its apparatuses, that binds whatever connection there may be between heart and soul.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

despite bottled relief, relief has been slow in coming. I won't name the quantity I've taken in an attempt to curb the pain I've had today, but it's been a lot. A LOT. And still . . . STILL . . . the stalker that never sleeps.

And I need to get to sleep. I have to get up in 7 hours, which would normally in someone's normal world wouldn't be such a big deal, but for me--either no sleep or MUCH sleep--who knows what it'll be tonight. I'm not tired. I spent too much time with Madame Bovary, over 5 hours, and then suddenly it was almost midnight and I hadn't packed and I have to leave early in the morning and wake up earlier than that to call my electrician and get ready for my trip to Rutherford. AND shit god damn I need to get directions. I wish Minnie would let me drive my car so I could just use my GPS. And so I could smoke. And listen to my music. And use less gas. But oh well. WE COULD, but she just...she thinks her wheelchair is only properly suited for her vehicle. And I forgot to cancel our dinner reservations. Maybe we'll keep them. Whatever.

BUT THIS . . . PAIN . . . OF MINE . . . ceaseless, relentless, overwhelming, constant, closer than my shadow, suffocating every thought in my head, pulling my strings to and fro, this master puppeteer coils its strings noose-like to drag me uselessly behind through this ghost I call life, mammoth phantom-me, the ultimate undesirable, as its been made so plain in so many ways from so many sources.

NULL AND VOID.

The validity of my existence expired years ago.
Like a fucking pizza-place coupon you find stuffed in the creases of your couch with loose change.
What's the culmination of my legacy to be?
Lists of complaints: read on . . .

Monday, January 12, 2009

Waiting for the relief that comes in a handful of small circular pink pills. New year. New deductibles. Scrips ate more than half my last paycheck. Dreams like labyrinths. Pain like my shadow, always by my side, most faithful of companions; a stalker, relentless. Controls my every move, mood, action, desire. O, puppeteer, your strings coil noose-like and drag me uselessly behind you. But you're all I have left. Where, what would I be without you?

Sunday, January 11, 2009

All my directions are cut off.
I'm stuck where I am.
No place, there's no where to go. No escape.
No fast getaway.
Tomorrow feels so far away.
My head feels like an anvil, dragging me by the ears.
All the while, upside down.
Sinking.
Inner-pulsing, like a swelling from the core of my brain, pressing out, out, out against my skull, eyes, ears, temples, like that first one when I was so desperately ill in the ER, my mom begging rushing interns for a damp cloth, for anything to put on my forehead, waiting 9 hours for a doctor, and morphine...so useless.

But not as strong, now. Obviously, or I'd crawl to an ER, feel my way across the cold, course cracks of pavement, eyes useless, directionless, waiting, hoping, praying...relief...relief...

Now, the junior version. Baby-monster. Spawn of spawn. Decidedly uncomfortable, decidedly present, decidedly...decided.

in no particular order

I think I must agree with Monsieur Daudet sr. and acquiesce to the dominant force of what I am feeling, acknowledge and agree that there is no language for pain, just maybe some reminisces, Brent Arnold and the Spheres bending a saw in my direction, flurries of adjectives criss-crossing my eyelids closed on the day from my newest nausea or--or god damn some MUSIC IS NOT MEANT FOR PAIN--don't whisper sweet nothing bullshits at me from afar, Mr. Nowhere Nothing Man, some star ensconced in earthly mansions--THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU LUCIFER.

and yet still that strange power that illusion of WHAT COUNTS I read Alphonse he cannot feel his legs he is wracked with 40 years of disease but he is at Victor Hugo's funeral and he writes, "At Victor Hugo's funeral..." like I would say "At the grocery store..." and it's all mixed up in me, in this topsy-turvy wildly worshipping world. But I would rather go to Victor Hugo's funeral than a Hollywood soiree. Even though that means I'd be dead already.

Just straws to grasp it, since there's so little else...
I don't have a bottle to grasp for today.
...tomorrow...
I will.

That bottle those bottles they're the only solace I have. They take it away for just for such a moment and suddenly I can smile I can do LIFE I can hug someone and let go. Today I am couch-confined, swooning across the confines employed by the circumference of my skull. I find Continental good for this think-spell. I still think the world would have been a more interesting place had Ian Curtis not killed himself, a legacy of more JD rather than birthing NO. But I can't say I blame him. I can't say I don't know what that helplessness feels like. As Jeff Tweedy yells at me, "Why would you want to live in this world?" Good fucking question.

So much in busywork approaching me.

I will lend an aspect of inspiration from Daudet; fragment myself in notes.

Pain has no narrative structure.
No throughline.
No payoff, no underlying meaning.
It just persists.
The only tension, I guess--the only question that remains to be seen: who will last the longer?