A Flight of Ideas

There is something fundamentally different within my heart and soul that was not so two years ago.

I am missing something, my wordlview has been shattered, things have been too hard on me, and I am just a little bit too broken to continue sitting on the shelf. I’m expired, damaged, and should be thrown out. The sell-by date has come and gone, and I can feel it in my bones.

I have less hope than I used to, a less optimistic outlook on life, a less sure footing in the world. I am persistently waiting for the other shoe to drop, and consistently the world drops it for me. So I suppose, the world is really poised like Kali, a slipper or stiletto or Jimmy Choo dangling from each arm, the closet of Imelda Marcos at her reach; there is an eternity of shoes waiting to be dropped, and I don’t know how I can continue hair-trigger waiting, cocked and taut, safety off.

I am tired, to be sure. I never thought “too much” would be “too much.”  The brain surgery, the moves, the divorce, the job change, the inept graduate program, the unsatisfactory employment, the chronic pain, the life-altering diagnosis, the parental disownment, their theft of my personal property, the coming out, the estrangement from friends, the death of grandparents, the nomadic lifestyle for a year, the transition. The list alone is exhausting. I am sure I have not detailed it all of it, and then to remember that I lived through it, am living through it, and am still feeling its ramifications every day … well, I’ve become blase and unfeeling. I am rather numb. I see the world as gray. Every day is gray. I fear sunshine, as it may make me feel too much. No day is too happy. No day is too sad. I am just getting through. I am not depressed, but I am not happy. I just am. And that’s no way to be, really.

Most days I think about being dead. I think about how it would be a lot easier if I were dead. Not because I want to kill myself. not because I am in any psychic pain overtly. Physical pain, yes, somedays immensely. Somedays that almost drives me to suicde admittedly. Most days I think about dying because the living is so pedantic. I barely feel alive most days, within my soul. This business of life has become so tiresome, so full of the bad, I’m ready to give it up. 

I guess what I’ve lost is my spirit. And I’m not sure any therapist or shrink can give that back to me.

I don’t have any happy things to say today. No good morals to the story of my life. I am sad and worn out, and I want out.

I have cried myself to sleep three nights in a row. I am tired of nighttimes, where every dark thought creeps its way into my head, and there aren’t good answers to the problems that I have found myself in, and I wish I was 20 again and a smoker and a full of an arrogant resolve that said I could do anything.

I am trapped in a body that I hate and don’t want, didn’t ask for and don’t identify with. I pinch the flesh and curse it for being fat, for being crippled and broke down and in pain. I am angry that it continues to betray me after all these years. I throb in pain as I cry silently, and know that this is my fate: a loneliness that no one can ever know but me: to have a spirit that is alive and full and completely unable to be be expressed by the lemon that I have been given by my asshole parents, who topped off the recent brain surgery by mailing a 46-pound package to my house with the remnants of my childhood stashed inside. It bespoke the evidence of their hatred toward me. I am a castoff, a degenerate: they hate my flesh too. And I don’t blame them. I am ugly, a scar, a mar on everyone who comes into contact with me.

The incision from my posterior fossa decompression has not healed yet. It’s been a month, and there it is, a festering wound on my neck, white and pink and red. It’s ripped open in the middle while the rest of the scar has heled up into my hair and down my neck. It’s a reminder that my body sucks. It won’t do what it is supposed to do, so that I may be subjected to additional atrocities such as cerebral spinal fluid leaks and spinal taps and medical residents so that I can live out my own personal Grey’s Anatomy anytime I am ushered to the Emergency Room.

Daily I am greeted with a pounding headache, worse than what I had before the surgery. My surgeon dismisses me: “I am not concerned about these headaches,” he says. When they abate, I find myself with my hip giving out and my leg buckling. A trip to Target is like navigating a minefield: Can I make it throuhg Health and Beauty without faling down? Should I rest in the candles before venturing to the registers? I will not use a wheelchair. That is admitting defeat, and I don’t look like I have a disabililty. I just look fat. And therefore lazy. And I’ve already been fighting that all my life.

I am afraid of the ice that has fallen already this winter. I am terrified of leaving my house. What if I fall and hit the back of my head, where they have grafted a patch over the dura, the membrane that covers my brain? My condition renders me naturally graceless, and I always fall on the ice.

I am afraid of drivind, and turning my head. What if I dehissicate my wound further?

I am afraid of walking to far? What if my leg locks up for good?

I am deathly afraid of the hospital. What if they decide on another spinal tap? They already told me I was too fat, so the chances of getting it done within a few pokes were low. One resident told me that he has poked people, dug around in their spinal cord, for up to 30 minutes. What if that’s me? Because I am too fat? I am having a panic attack thinking about it right now.

This is the rest of my life. Spinal taps. Maybe another brain surgery. One resident told me maybe it didn’t work. The surgery. An inability to walk properly. Hand tremors. Twitches all over my body. Brain fog. Dementia. Chronic, neverending pain. MRIs. Painful IVs. Fighting over pain medications. No career. Maybe quitting graduate school. Here I am 31. Two years ago, my body could do anything. And now, I live by the whim of my body. I feel like my life is over. And really, I wish it was.