I'm awake again.
This is the third time I've woken up, and the sun shining through my window is too strong of evidence for me to convince myself it's still nighttime. Since it was already starting to get light the last time I woke up, it's probably creeping towards late morning now. I don't care. My automatic response is still the same.
I should go back to sleep, I tell myself. And, curling into the hidden depths of my quilt, I do.
* * *
I'm awake again.
Each time, it's a disheartening realization. Eventually, though, I cannot force myself to return to sleep. Twelve hours, fourteen hours . . . I can't seem to cram in more sleep than that. At some point, usually just a little before noon, I simply have to resign myself to being awake.
My pills . . .
I roll over, reaching drunkenly for the pill box at the side of my bed. I snatch my water bottle and quickly swallow the three little pills, my body still mostly on autopilot. It's not that my brain isn't awake; it's just that it's miserable. What's the point? The murmur slouches in my mind. I feel awful.
But I'm too afraid to not take the pills. If I feel this bad with medication, what horrors lurk just beyond?
Now that I've moved, it becomes impossible for me to ignore my screaming bladder. I drag myself to the bathroom - fortunately only a few feet from my bedroom door - and return to my bed as quickly as possible. I bury myself in blankets again.
My stomach is aching, but I can't stand the thought of walking upstairs, of having to prepare food. So I pull out my laptop to distract myself. YouTube. Netflix. Facebook. Tumblr. Pinterest. Yahoo!News. Sporcle. Comics. Anything. Everything.
This is giving me no pleasure whatsoever, I notice, dispassionately. I don't care about any of this. I don't care about any of these people.
Something in me rustles, unsettled. I should get up, I think. I should do something.
I can't.
I can't. I just can't.
* * *
Once it starts to feel like someone is scraping the inner lining out of my stomach, I finally go upstairs to find something to eat. It's almost 3:30pm. My family is there. They're watching TV, or talking, or playing games, or making plans.
Someone is talking to me, I realize. I glance over at my sister.
"How are you?" she asks, innocently.
Why do people ask me that? "I'm alive," I tell her.
She smiles awkwardly, unsure what to say next.
I'm not being very nice, I think. But I don't care. Fortunately for my sister my mom comes in and wants to talk to her about doing something with the ward this week. They start talking about activities and who'll be in attendance, and I'm listening because I'm desperate to be around conversation but I'm incapable of participating in it. (That's also the reason I pretend to be asleep in the living room sometimes.)
I'M A COMPLETE LOSER!
The thought slams against the inside of my head, and my arm shoots out involuntarily. I frantically try to wrangle my thoughts as they continue to batter me. I DON'T DO ANYTHING TO HELP ANYBODY. I DON'T EVEN BOTHER TO TAKE CARE OF MYSELF. I'M PATHETIC! I'M PATHETIC AND NO WONDER I'M MISERABLE BECAUSE I'M SUCH A WASTE OF SPACE!
My mom notices me twitching. "You alright?" she asks.
I'm biting my tongue, stomping down the anguished beasts gnawing at my insides until they're quiet again, just growling. "Mm-hmm," I grimace. I make eye contact with her, and an understanding passes between us. I'm not okay. But that's okay.
It's weird how much that soothes me: that I can be in pain around my mom and it won't bother her.
* * *
Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can sneak in a nap during the afternoon, a few more hours of sweet, peaceful unconsciousness. Otherwise I'll probably go down to my room and let my eyes glaze over in front of my computer screen some more. Every so often, frequently without warning, another one of the beasts will get out and snap at me.
I have to move this week. I HAVE to. What am I going to do with all of my stuff?
I squint my eyes shut.
I worked so hard for that life, and now it's completely destroyed. I've lost everything.
I grit my teeth, balling my fists.
What am I going to do? What on earth am I supposed to do? I can't start over again!
I let out a strangled cry that's half moan and half gasp. My family glances at me, mixed expressions of embarrassment or concern or irritation - after all, this has gone on quite long enough. I want to be around them - it doesn't make me happy, but it makes me not alone - but I feel bad about it. I have nothing to give. I'm a drain and a drag, and nobody wants to be around me. I don't blame them. I haven't even showered or brushed my teeth today.
I am filthy. I'm disgusting. But I can't muster up the energy to do anything about it but hide. Besides, all I can do is clean up the outside of me. If I were to go out into the world where people are, they might want to talk to me - unbearable, unthinkable. And even if they didn't talk to me, I'm leaking despair. I'd leave trails of invisible grime all over the place.
* * *
Ironically, even though I spend all day trying to duck back into unconsciousness, at nighttime I don't want to go to sleep. I lay in my bed for hours, reading or drowning myself in the internet again. Alone with my thoughts, I let the morose waves wash over me again and again.
I have become a wretch, I think, distantly. I've turned into some kind of hobgoblin, hunched over, with just enough discolored skin to stretch over my bones and tissues. My hair is limp and stringy, falling over my face as I crawl around in barbaric, lurching movements. Once capable of speech, now all I do is growl and snap, staring out distrustfully from the dark confines of my cave.
Oddly, putting it into words like this - writing a story for myself, creating a world where this makes sense - amuses me. It brings a smile to my face for a moment. But then my smile collapses under its own weight and I'm left with only darkness.
Always, always darkness.
* * *
How am I ever going to get better?
1 comment:
Once, during a time of incredible pressure and difficulty, I went to a therapist for two sessions (it was all I was gifted). He made a comment that has resonated during times of difficulty in the 20 years since. He asked me if it were within my religious beliefs to consider divorce. I told him emphatically no. He commented that that was too bad because if I didn't have the choice to go that my choice to stay didn't really mean anything. That was pretty hard to take considering how much I was investing in gritting my way through this choice that I felt was the only one I could make. And eventually the window opened and divorce was acceptable to me. I stayed for a while after that. That staying meant something more than all the staying before because I could choose.
I think we look at health that way, as if it's the only choice we have. That's too bad. We really can choose to be unhealthy. Sometimes I think that until that's a valid choice, trying to (or beating ourselves into) being healthy doesn't mean anything at all. Like the whirlpool, we have to stop flopping around fighting it before it will spin us out.
I admire that your mom can be with you and know that you don't feel comfortable inside your own skin and she understands. So does God. It isn't his voice insisting that you be well, do well, and quit being baggage. But we've all needed to learn the difference between his voice and the one inside our head that we've created in his image.
Keep writing. I really like it.
Post a Comment