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juushikaIn Corvallis, housesitting while my father is in Calfornia, meeting my mother at the tail end of a long stay in Texas. They'll be down there a few days, visiting friends; it's just Jamie and me in the meantime, hangin'.
Devon and I went round one in mission: tame the back pain last night. "Is it any better?" "Yes, actually." "It'll be worse tomorrow." And it was, starting when I woke at the end of my first sleep cycle at 3a, and I slept like shite on account. This battle with my back has been one of the toughest yet—in part just because the pain's been bad, in part because it's been going on for weeks now, in part because it's been one factor in many: exhaustion, maybe some depression, triggering (but good!) media, people I know with mental health and substance abuse issues, people I know with chronic pain issues, all of them filling my head to one whirling blur of problematic thoughts. But they are primarily thoughts; the only thing which is concrete is the pain—and even that is half as often phantom pain, a pain I can't feel directly but still know to be there because it effects me or just because I know. Writing about it seems insincere—like I'm appropriating other people's much more pressing issues, or dwelling on passing problems, or just making up problems entirely. Ten years in on this—my back problems started when I was abroad in England at sixteen; it terrifies me, in a way, that it's been so long—and I still don't believe it's real. On some level, I still think I'm faking it for attention or just because I enjoy being miserable. If I don't have rights to it, I certainly don't have rights to all the other thoughts, that blur. Before this trip I'd reached a point somewhere between resigned and angry, where I wasn't even trying to treat it anymore, I wasn't trying to do anything but watch TV and not think, but I was also taking these long walks despite a 80 degree heatwave, trying to pour all the agitation into blisters and sweat, trying to get so tired that I could actually sleep.
I don't know.
Today Jamie and I went for a walk. 60 degree weather, overcast and windy. Jamie's coming up on ten herself and often it's hard to tell, but man did all the uphills tire her. She's sleeping well, now. We went up a hilly residential street and into the Timberland forest, a walk I've made hundreds of times. I found sacred art in the woods, feathers tied a vine on a tree with bows of red fabric. They added a new road and residential development up that way about a year ago, and I hadn't been up there since, but to my surprise so much of the wilds are still intact—the field is gone, but the path beside it remains, and you can still walk in nature instead of beside a road. The wind was noisy through the tips of the pines; outside the forest, wild iris dotted the path. I felt grateful to be there. I ... haven't felt that in a while.
I really don't know. On one hand I'm full of thoughts about what it means to have a decade of chronic illness behind me (and a lifetime more to come!), and how I consider myself an alcoholic who's just never had a drink, and how ironic is that what keeps me from drinking is primarily that I'm too mentally ill to obtain alcohol har har har, and what it means to think about suicide, and if it changes things to admit that I think about suicide, and ... and. And yet I come here to a boyfriend that loves me beyond reason, and there is wind in the trees. I don't know how the two balance out, right now.
Devon and I went round one in mission: tame the back pain last night. "Is it any better?" "Yes, actually." "It'll be worse tomorrow." And it was, starting when I woke at the end of my first sleep cycle at 3a, and I slept like shite on account. This battle with my back has been one of the toughest yet—in part just because the pain's been bad, in part because it's been going on for weeks now, in part because it's been one factor in many: exhaustion, maybe some depression, triggering (but good!) media, people I know with mental health and substance abuse issues, people I know with chronic pain issues, all of them filling my head to one whirling blur of problematic thoughts. But they are primarily thoughts; the only thing which is concrete is the pain—and even that is half as often phantom pain, a pain I can't feel directly but still know to be there because it effects me or just because I know. Writing about it seems insincere—like I'm appropriating other people's much more pressing issues, or dwelling on passing problems, or just making up problems entirely. Ten years in on this—my back problems started when I was abroad in England at sixteen; it terrifies me, in a way, that it's been so long—and I still don't believe it's real. On some level, I still think I'm faking it for attention or just because I enjoy being miserable. If I don't have rights to it, I certainly don't have rights to all the other thoughts, that blur. Before this trip I'd reached a point somewhere between resigned and angry, where I wasn't even trying to treat it anymore, I wasn't trying to do anything but watch TV and not think, but I was also taking these long walks despite a 80 degree heatwave, trying to pour all the agitation into blisters and sweat, trying to get so tired that I could actually sleep.
I don't know.
Today Jamie and I went for a walk. 60 degree weather, overcast and windy. Jamie's coming up on ten herself and often it's hard to tell, but man did all the uphills tire her. She's sleeping well, now. We went up a hilly residential street and into the Timberland forest, a walk I've made hundreds of times. I found sacred art in the woods, feathers tied a vine on a tree with bows of red fabric. They added a new road and residential development up that way about a year ago, and I hadn't been up there since, but to my surprise so much of the wilds are still intact—the field is gone, but the path beside it remains, and you can still walk in nature instead of beside a road. The wind was noisy through the tips of the pines; outside the forest, wild iris dotted the path. I felt grateful to be there. I ... haven't felt that in a while.
I really don't know. On one hand I'm full of thoughts about what it means to have a decade of chronic illness behind me (and a lifetime more to come!), and how I consider myself an alcoholic who's just never had a drink, and how ironic is that what keeps me from drinking is primarily that I'm too mentally ill to obtain alcohol har har har, and what it means to think about suicide, and if it changes things to admit that I think about suicide, and ... and. And yet I come here to a boyfriend that loves me beyond reason, and there is wind in the trees. I don't know how the two balance out, right now.
