She Came in Through The Bathroom Window

Am I going about this the wrong way? All of these stops and starts and victories and false hope and back to square one and emergencies and scares and changes in drugs and dosages and symptoms and side effects are driving me nuts. Since I got back from Mexico I have been on a decline getting weaker and more exhausted by the day culminating on Sunday where I could not even sit up in bed. I had a fever on Sunday and Monday was more of the same. I tried to go to work on Monday but after it took me an hour to put clothes on I discovered that couldn't make it down the stairs in my building and promptly got back into bed. My last normal meal was last Friday. I was unable to eat all week because I was so nauseaus and had severe abdominal pain like I got punched in the stomach or my organs were being squeezed by a tourniquet almost knocking the breath out of me all week. All I could do was sleep. All week.

Until today.

I woke up today and I feel normal. Whenever this happens it feels miraculous. I feel like, okay, I am fine, life can resume, I am out of the woods, I am passed that, it's over. I am fine now. But then it always happens again. Or rather some other version of it happens again. Each time it's different. And I am feeling like the girl who cried wolf. Because I get everyone mobilised and into attack mode and then suddenly I wake up on a beautiful Friday morning feeling the sun wash over me and I am hungry and want coffee and have energy and care what I look like and make my bed and wonder why I am getting all of these worried voicemails because I'm fine.

All week I was contemplating surrender. I was like, "who am I kidding, I can't live alone. D. is right. I need constant care. I am unpredictable, my health is unreliable." I go to sleep feeling one way and wake up feeling completely different. And sometimes that completely different is dangerous. This time I was actually contemplating the unthinkable, "I should move home. It's time to give up. Who do I think I am." I thought I had lost some of my cockiness and had become more realistic about my abilities but maybe not. Did I really think I could do it alone? Maintain my apartment, my job and finances and my health all by myself? Did I really believe that?

For the past two weeks, getting to work has been my number one priority because the prospect of losing this gig scares me to death. If I moved in with my parents and gave up my life which I finally set up exactly the way I want it I would sink into a deep depression, wouldn't I? But everything in my life has fallen by the wayside the past two weeks. I have not contacted my aunt J who has outreached so much to me and been so understanding and in touch even when I have been difficult. I left her hanging about last Saturday when she invited me to a political fundraiser. I promised D I would call her on Sunday and didn't. All I have been able to do is focus on two things, work and V. Anything outside the confines of those two things I have not done. I have come home at night, taken off my clothes and dove into bed. No unwinding, no putting anything away, no putting on pajamas. And when a few months ago I wouldn't feel so guilty about how I have neglected people who have been so good to me, a few months ago I didn't realize how much I appreciated these people and how aware I am of their efforts towards me. And I have been unable to reciprocate or accept anything from them these past two weeks. I haven't even emailed or called. Everything that was not work, sleep or V. has been insurmountable and simply undoable.

I want to be smarter this time. I don't want to celebrate how great I feel like this marks the end of relapses and weird related peripheral illnesses because I am sure it doesn't. So where does this leave me? This is where I feel like I have to live life to the fullest to make up for the past two weeks. I have to do yoga. I have to to call D. and apologize profusely for being such a bad friend. I have to call Aunt J and apologize profusely for being so ungrateful. I have to pick up my laundry and clean my apartment and see some friends and read my mail and pay some bills and get all the shit together that's gone by the wayside the past two weeks. I have so much I have to do now that I am able do it.

But is that smart? Does the mania of cramming everything in now contribute to me falling apart when I do? I don't know. But how else do I keep it all together? Because I need to keep it all together; and if I don't take full advantage of my ability when I have it, I will really fall behind when I am sick. Am I climbing up the wrong mountain? Is there a simpler, easier more obvious way to live this new life. I can just hear my dad's constant admonishment, "you may be wrong but you are never in doubt." And I haven't been in doubt about my choice to maintain my apartment and lifestyle and job ...until now. I am afraid because each time I think it is the last relapse, the last time I get some weird related illness; and then it happens again. Will it ever stop. If it doesn't, I will need to make some choices. I feel like I have replaced my grandmother as the person with all the needs who calls at the most inconvenient times asking for help or company or just asking needing wanting crying. I can't keep my family in this limbo that I am in. I can't keep those close to me so close and then disappear from them when I am exhausted and sick and expect them to continue to understand. Who do I think I am? This just isn't a way to live and this isn't a way to treat people. This isn't a long term solution. But what is. What is??!! I think I am finally on the road to acceptance and adjustment and then I get thrown another obstacle. And I am not an acrobat. I am cocky; I rise to challenges; I take dares; I like proving people wrong, but this is beyond all that. I know when to hold em but the real lesson for me is to learn when to fold em. Maybe now? Maybe next time. Who the hell knows.