but am I?

I had a lovely summer. I learned to be happy, I pushed my limits, I made new friends. I was more than just my sickness; I was someone you'd want to be around. People started asking me for advice: how do I quit smoking, what vitamins should I take, how should I change my diet, can you cure my cold.

we're well into autumn, with just over a month left before the shortest day of the year. as the light begins to decline the respites from pain grow few and far between. I'm trying to come up with better coping mechanisms for Incipient Winter Doom. I got a light therapy box, a shit-ton of vitamin D, and I've been ingesting a ridiculous amount of anti-anxiety/depression/pain herbs, both Chinese and European.

I have a tendency to let myself slip too far down into the Black Dog hole. I have a tendency to let the physical anxiety from consistent high pain levels create mental obsessions over things that are out of my control. I confuse a desire to hurt less with a death wish. I forget how much better things are when it's warm outside.

Pain is a time warp. It's long-term memory damage. It's being forever stuck in the present. If I were more than just a lazy Buddhist, I'd be ok with it. instead I think maybe there's such a thing as too much mindfulness. sometimes I hurt so much that it gets hard to breathe.

Pain is an endless rick-rolling and I can't Force Quit.

Until April or May, then, the best I can do is turn on my light-box, take my vitamins, drink my potions, hope that Corydalis yanhusuo doesn't tolerate too rapidly, and try to fill my life with as many distractions as possible.

Until April or May, I'll dig my toes into the clay and keep pushing this heavy, heavy rock uphill.

(and keep watching House.)


It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

I am tired. I am true of heart! You are tired. You are true of heart!

the pain is my constant companion. sometimes it withdraws a little and I am able to go socialize with the neurotypicals, but for every hour spent in the garage at the lyndale rats' messing with bikes, there are seven hours spent in bed listening to the pain gnaw away at my body, tiny fire ants crazing my bones to dust. worrying about the future and waiting for sleep, and oblivion.

I have reached the point where I no longer remember what it was like before the pain.

I try to tell myself that there is something I must learn from all this, that I am coal being crushed to diamond. Were I to believe in Powers that Be I would be praying for grace and guidance and for whatever wisdom there is to be gleaned from the unrelenting boredom and loneliness to manifest itself in my heart. this is an exercise in trust, and in patience, and in acceptance.

I want to believe that I am not missing out on anything living in the slow lane, hobbling along with my heavy heavy load, I want to believe that I am shedding karma and learning to be true of heart. I want to believe that my suffering will inspire love and compassion in those around me. I want to believe that one day I will be self-sufficient again, that I will be rewarded for these long dark teatimes of the soul, that there is in fact an end to pain.

I can no longer ask for mercy. it has clearly been denied. for now, at least. all I can ask is for patience, and faith. and hope.

may all beings be at peace and free from suffering. and may I one day be one of them.