for about oh, four hours today, this site was gone. it won’t make any sense to anyone, so i don’t know why i’m trying to explain. just what i do, i reckon.
i found the cure for my pain-racked legs and ankles. i think. it’s a cure so far. i’ll get to that in a moment. first, i want to give some context.
for those of you who do not know, i have … something. be damned if anyone has succeeded in figuring out what, exactly, it is.
for four years, it had me in a wheelchair. in all likelihood, i’m “supposed” to still be in it. but they can bite my ass. i’d rather fucking crawl every day than do that again.
still, since roughly 1993, there is not a day that passes that i am not in pain.
it isn’t something i usually talk about, after all, i have a hard enough time keeping people in my life without becoming some black cloud that no one can bear being around because it makes them feel bad for knowing i’m hurting and there’s nothing they can do about it.
irony.
anyway.
on a scale of 1 to 10, the average day is a four or five. just the way it is. spikes here and there depending on the weather and very likely, my hormones. i tend not to think on it too much because it just pisses me off when i realize i have no real idea and a good bit of my life depends on “what mood my legs and feet are in today”.
nothing really helps. anti-inflammatories never did and believe me, they tried them all on me. aspirin sometimes does. tylenol and alleve (sp) rarely do.
so i live with it.
when the swelling gets really bad, i put on my compression anklets because its the ankles and feet that bear the brunt of any flare up in most cases.
sometimes my hips. on rare occasion, my hands. my right shoulder is permanently pissed off and i have to baby the hell out of it, and generally speaking i can’t lift more than oh, 20lbs (and am not supposed to be doing that).
for the most part, i ignore all that stupid shit and do what i can when i can and figure, what the hell, i’m hurting anyway, may as well have a good feeling for helping someone for it.
so.
today, i decide to try something new because my left ankle and foot started up almost as soon as i got in the truck this morning and by the time i was halfway to work, i was biting my cheek not to cry for the pain.
i hobbled into the drug store and decided to give something a bit more drastic a try.
i picked up a pair of compression stockings. 20-30mg, blah blah blah. i won’t bore you with the details.
within minutes of putting one on, my left leg stopped hurting.
as in stopped.
i put the right one on.
i’ve had them on all day and i will likely sleep in them tonight.
but as i was driving home today, all i could think about was how ridiculous it is that i have to wear these fucking things. and, of all the stupid things to think of, i thought of the last time i could actually wear heels.
no, that’s not quite right. i thought of the last time i felt truly attractive.
and then, of course, i bawled my eyes out. i was glad to be in my truck flying down the road without traffic. i had this stupid scenario in my head… kind of a spoof of my life. i finally meet someone and the dread day/night comes when i have to undress. the thick, woven fabric of the compression socks are anything but sexy.
i was laughing and crying at once, “oh yes, he will surely swoon for the notion of pulling THESE off of me.” the movie in my mind became a comedy, the guy leveraging himself against the end of the bed and struggling with them and all the while trying not to let me see how repulsed he was.
projection, of course. i am repulsed.
i can’t work out. i can’t run. i can’t even fucking walk long enough to make decent exercise of it. the closest pool is in the gym and no use without membership. like i can afford that. the Y is in the next town over and with gas as it is… bleh. the stupidity of the circumstances just becomes like white noise. i can’t run that fucking maze anymore.
the layers just pile up until i cannot breathe and i have to cry or i’m just going to drive into a fucking tree. so i cry. and i feel like it’s hopeless. and then i get angry because i don’t want to want something i seemingly cannot have in life. it sucks. it hurts. i’m tired of it.
then i get angry at myself because i can’t seem to not want it. and from there it just spins up like a dust storm until…. well, until i get on a train of thought that i just don’t talk about.
i made a video, but i chickened out and deleted it. just as well. it was painful in every way and the last thing i want is to dish that on others.
not that this doesn’t, i suppose…. sorry.
thing is, this kind of thing doesn’t get better. it doesn’t go away.
the pain isn’t the thing. i’ve been hurting in one way or another all my life. i’m used to that.
it’s the feeling that it is never going to change. never going to get anything but worse. and of course, the feeling that i’m going to wind up the bag lady, living under a bridge or rotting away in some state hospital because it’s the only place that can’t put me on the street.
but mostly it’s the idiocy of compression stockings and the effect of having one more thing to add to the list of things to explain in life. if ever there comes a time when i could possibly have a situation arise in which i’d as much as need to have such a conversation.
there’s the thorn. as always.
time to sleep.