Selah // Something Witty

And I will swallow my pride.

Date: 01.15.17 -- Day Five
Music: "Say Something (Mahogany Sessions, A Great Big World Cover)" / Jacob Banks

It is frighteningly easy to let things fall through the cracks, like an old pot that it is no longer vitreous. There are these small cracks forming in the foundation allowing the water to soak into the clay, slowly dripping out of the bottom. That's what my brain feels like these days. And as more things slip away, the angrier I become because I am frightened of what will fall away next.

Yesterday wasn't a particularly good day, body-wise. There was so much pain; it crashed on me like 100-foot waves. Everything seemed to be failing and I couldn't get in front of it. I can never get in front of it. Unpredictable, relentlessly unwavering. And the thing is, I was having a semi-decent week. I made it to class, one out of two of my staff meetings, tutoring sessions for my other work. But the brain is a fickle thing, and the pain is just exhausting. With a snap of the fingers, yesterday went from potentially productive to an absolute wash. Even worse, I failed at keeping things in order. I missed an extremely important deadline for a close friend of mine because I mixed up the dates. She was vastly understanding and compassionate, but it is shit like this that makes my condition all the more unbearable. I keep letting down the people around me, and I have just enough cognition left to know it.

So I start next week behind rather than in front. I'm grinding through work, again. Another long night in front of me with jacked up nerves and a mind that feels more like swiss cheese than an actual muscle that carries useful knowledge. My body has always been a pile of garbage, but at least I had my mind for a while. Not the smartest or the fastest but the damn thing was dependable before all of this. Now there is only dense fog with short-term memory shot to hell, aphasia clogging up the gears, and a baseline fatigue that makes every little bump feel like K2. It seems like I spend most of my time trying to cope with the pain so that actually doing something else seems like a Herculean task. Or maybe Sisyphus. Really any Greek tragedy about futility or hubris.

I don't even know how to end this other than to say, this is my new normal. Yesterday was an example of why I walked away before. My body and brain are falling apart, so I did what I usually do -- curled into a ball and shut out everything that was non-essential. Maybe that's why I came back. Because it's getting worse. This is the first time I've really admitted it to myself. My condition is getting worse and all I want is to hide from it all. But I can't. So I will try this instead. And maybe I'll make it through this.