There comes a point where you have to accept that whatever get up and go you used to have has got up and went.
Somehow I missed two alarms for my five am call, but was woken by my sister’s text. I had to get the car back, the one she has had for about six weeks now, locking me down. The neon coloured sheet that reported my father’s “recovery” from dysphagia is gone, and my collection of bags all crumpled up by a clown who didn’t respect them or me, but there is a car in the driveway, changed without thought to warranty because no one asked me.
It was so hard to get up this morning, so much pain in my feet, so much slop, that I started to cry, remembering the way I would spend all hours taking care of my parents, with preparation and hospital drives and more.
it’s my 21st month in purgatory since my parents died, cut off from resources and possibility. I knew my sister wouldn’t notice my quiet sobbing and she did not.
I try to get up and do something, but I know that I am just seriously out of shape. Everything hurts and I don’t have even the endurance I which was my drive.
Just the other day I got the dreaded Santa Claus identification. It’s not the first time after I haven’t had the energy, the intent or the need to shave in a while that I have gotten it, but I don’t like it.
I’m afraid to shave, though, afraid to see myself plainly, to see how I am decayed. I feel the decay in my mouth, my chest, my feet, my eyes, but after months of not even washing often, looking into the mirror and knowing that I don’t have the resource to array a feminine arsenal of care products to bolster my own view of my self, my own esteem, well, that is a stopper
“The only remedy for decondtioning is conditioning. ” I scripted that line for my mother’s physical therapist, to try and motivate her. The PT agreed completely, but every time my mother heard it she heard my voice and vision, admonishment she shirked from, just as my sister shirks from facing me.
Living in a palace of ghosts has not been good for me, because life flows away from me and not towards me. The weakness grows into deep weariness as I become more and more flabby and decayed everyday, enough so that the thought of facing what I have degraded into is a burden.
As long as there is life, there is hope, people will tell me, just as I have told others.
When one feels the life slipping away, though, it becomes hard to be infected by the romance of existence, the open hearted quest for connection and energy.
I know that I have to try again, muster what I can and put one more surge of energy in, scraping from the bottom of the life force batteries my creator gifted to me. I need to take another bold shot to show myself.
A flickering candle, though, does not generate much light and is easily extinguished. I feel myself guttering and don’t know if I can handle being gutted again.
Resistance is futile, I know.
But what else is also futile?
Callan 