This time of year and this particular season are incredibly difficult for me.
Learning lessons from the bleak outside changes and shivering through the dropping temperatures are unwelcome experiences. Skies filled with potential of snow and other frozen problem makers fill me with dread. And self-pity, of course. These days I take almost everything personally.
And as my body interior systems continue to fail I desperately have to come up with new strategies to keep myself from jumping off a bridge. I don't have an orange today. I wonder if I can trick myself into accepting the canned peaches as a substitute. This is what I am learning. On Monday I will go to the grocery and hope that I remember to purchase an orange to be prepared for the next fruit crisis. Sometime those substitutes just don't work.
Chores are different, too. For me the ability to stand while doing a sink load of dirty dishes is a major accomplishment. Who would ever thought I, of all people, would be proud of such a task? And is it truly considered standing if I am leaning half of me against the counter while scrubbing? And literally counting the seconds before I collapse in pain before I finish cleaning the silverware? These are realities for me not whining.
Entertainment is parcelled between bathroom squabbles and repositioning the dead or dying body parts. I don't know how else to describe it. I wonder why it is organs that are broken or diseased or not longer functioning properly can be removed; but the leg which causes such agony and hinders so many life qualities cannot be sliced off and tossed in the rubbish heap. Luckily I do not own a power saw. This form of imagining is free amusement for the ill.
Anyway, I am getting through the days. I wish I was more like the saints I read about years ago in catechism class. They offered their suffering quietly up to god. My big secret even back then was that I thought they were all fools. They endured their individual excrutiations and didn't even allowed themselves to yell out loud. Still, I imagine there is a sort of dignity in it. I ain't got that skill. And I do so wish I had an orange.
Learning lessons from the bleak outside changes and shivering through the dropping temperatures are unwelcome experiences. Skies filled with potential of snow and other frozen problem makers fill me with dread. And self-pity, of course. These days I take almost everything personally.
And as my body interior systems continue to fail I desperately have to come up with new strategies to keep myself from jumping off a bridge. I don't have an orange today. I wonder if I can trick myself into accepting the canned peaches as a substitute. This is what I am learning. On Monday I will go to the grocery and hope that I remember to purchase an orange to be prepared for the next fruit crisis. Sometime those substitutes just don't work.
Chores are different, too. For me the ability to stand while doing a sink load of dirty dishes is a major accomplishment. Who would ever thought I, of all people, would be proud of such a task? And is it truly considered standing if I am leaning half of me against the counter while scrubbing? And literally counting the seconds before I collapse in pain before I finish cleaning the silverware? These are realities for me not whining.
Entertainment is parcelled between bathroom squabbles and repositioning the dead or dying body parts. I don't know how else to describe it. I wonder why it is organs that are broken or diseased or not longer functioning properly can be removed; but the leg which causes such agony and hinders so many life qualities cannot be sliced off and tossed in the rubbish heap. Luckily I do not own a power saw. This form of imagining is free amusement for the ill.
Anyway, I am getting through the days. I wish I was more like the saints I read about years ago in catechism class. They offered their suffering quietly up to god. My big secret even back then was that I thought they were all fools. They endured their individual excrutiations and didn't even allowed themselves to yell out loud. Still, I imagine there is a sort of dignity in it. I ain't got that skill. And I do so wish I had an orange.
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