How am I?
I’ve been trying (and really, simply failing) to keep a positive attitude about the start of this year. Between pain and fatigue and confusion about what my body is doing, I want to know what’s happening when I ask the doctors, “why?” and “what does this mean?” It’s disheartening when they don’t know, either.
Because when they don’t know, it’s hard to answer when family asks “How are you?” How am I, when my body aches for rest? When for the tenth night in a row I’m staring at the ceiling hoping for no dreams, so my joints aren’t aching or I’m not baffled by the new images my brain has conjured up (thank you, mental illness)? How am I, when I push through church, smiling appropriately, singing through the anthem, reflecting on the sermon, and hoping beyond hope that God gets me through one more day? How am I, when my husband and I discuss again, my health, a variant on the same old conversation: the fatigue, the headaches, the pain, the non-answers, the diet changes, the hopeless attempts at exercise that only set me back? How am I, when it’s not just me losing out on this life, but my husband – who misses out on a partner on his dreams, for running beside him, hiking beside him, working out beside him? A chance to have his partner achieve a tenth of what he hopes for her to achieve? How am I, when my body makes no sense from day to day, mentally or physically? There’s no short conversation to answer that. And that’s what certain family members seem to want. I can’t do that. It’s too messy. It’s too uncontainable. I’m not asking for pity either, nor solutions. When I describe what’s going on, it’s matter-of-fact. There’s no room for modesty left. I left that, long ago, when a nurse, incompetent at her job, burst one of my veins and it spurted onto the bed I was laying on and the floor; she told me, when I turned my head at her gasp, “don’t look!”. It left when they had to insert a catheter and my legs shook so badly and I tried to apologize through my pain, anxiety, and tears. It left when I had three consecutive bacterial infections and I had to have cultures done to get an antibiotic. I’m fighting battles that are intense, painful, and day-to-day different. I do not get to guarantee stability, although I wish I could. I cannot say for sure what my days look like. I cannot say for sure what my plans look like; at any given hour, they can be derailed by pain or a migraine or a mood swing (though the medication is treating the latter two, they’re not totally under control or cured). I’m in this to better myself, to get treatment, to figure out if this is caused by a condition that can be treated at its source. So far, no root cause has been determined: it’s been a waiting game for almost seven years.
At the moment, it’s the tiredness that bothers me most. I want to go out and do and be, but mostly my body whispers rest, rest, rest.
