I can’t decide if it’s a little or a lot, new that is. It’s a lot but it seems like it’s a little.. or maybe it’s just a little and it seems like it’s a lot?… Actually, it feels like both, or maybe neither.

Confused? Yes. My head spins with it, chronic pain seriously fucks with your head. I stutter, I can’t remember words, I can’t remember what I was talking about, I can’t think straight, they call it ‘fog’, ‘fibro fog’. They should call it ‘feeling like you’ve had half your brain smashed in by a brick’… that’s too long, maybe ‘fibro-lobotomized’ that still sounds too friendly… It all sounds too friendly.

You always think when you’re sitting in a first world country, watching what is happening to other people in a third world country, perhaps on an interesting documentary from your cozy living room, that you have a pretty good grasp of the situation. You know you can’t relate, what it’s like for them, but you can learn from the nice documentaries and have some empathy, and feel like you know theoretically what is going on.  Chronic pain used to be something I thought I had a relative grasp on theoretically.  When you’re not sitting comfortable on the outside, looking in, but sitting on the inside, looking out, it looks completely and entirely different.

You know, I used to just write, not edit, not check for cohesion, etc, and just write one long stream of consciousness post and hit ‘publish’. Now I have to go back, read, and re-write, re-write sentences that somehow lost words I thought I typed.

I have holes in my head. Pain is a gun that has shot holes in my head… fibro-lobotomized, shot gun style, lots of little pellets, where memories, mostly short term, ideas, hours of days, words, thoughts, functioning, just slide on out. Lost.  When my parents were here I think they thought I was ‘confused’ because of medication I was on. I had to explain that the medication I am on doesn’t have those kinds of side effects.  I’m not on anything remotely narcotic or mind altering.  I used to think pain killers, killed pain, and if you were a person with chronic pain, you just had to cope by dealing with the fact you might have to be a pill junkie for the rest of your life.

I fucking wish. I had no idea that for lots of chronic pain conditions, there isn’t medication that works.  It doesn’t work.

I explained to my parents, that this was part of the package deal I got with my fibro, the holes in my head, inability to think, losing chunks of things I would like to keep in there, don’t know which is more frustrating the actual physical pain part of the pain, or all the other stuff, the emotional pain part of losing control over not just your body, but your mind too.

So, enough of the emotional venting, need to vent, that’s one of the biggest reasons I blog. The other is it’s a place to record things. Which I may have to actually start reading myself in order to know what’s happened.

We’re not moving to the Island. Wolfe loves his job here. I love Wolfe, and the financial stability of his work situation combined with the lure of future excellent medical benefits… too tempting. I’m a little dissapointed, but not much, and also largely relieved too, because moving is a huge ordeal/stress.

I think part of my wanting to move so badly was a metaphor for trying to run away from my pain. Honestly Leila… no matter where you go, it’s going to come with you.

When I was very depressed years ago, and suicidal, I was always trying to ‘run’ away from the pain. Physically get up and go somewhere, anywhere, and maybe ‘there’ it would be better.

I’m out of metaphors… which I think is a metaphor for something, we’re back to the beginning, with truths in contradicting negatives.

It’s comforting, that the parts of my brain that are still there, seem to have some higher functioning.

Laundry list of what else is new…

Two puppies have gone to their forever homes, four puppies remain, two of which we’re keeping, simple math, I miss the puppies we have here more than the ones we don’t.  That’s another metaphor, but it’s too big for my brain.

There’s other new things, but I’ve forgotten them for now. It’s late, and it’s time I martyred myself and laid my ‘holy’ head down on a pillow.

Just to remind myself… “I cried because I had no shoes, ’till I met a man who had no feet.”

People have had it much worse than I, and they still get by. They survive, I guess the question is, can I.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 12:25 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.