I Want My Light Back

When you start to feel illness coming on and you know it's going to be uncomfortable, you brace yourself for the pain and the days where you can only lye in bed, waiting to feel like yourself again.

When you break a limb, it's a sudden pain that you couldn't have expected. You may not lye in bed for long or at all but you are unable to perform normally and it is a bother.

When you have surgery, you can plan ahead and prepare yourself as much as possible, but afterward, you feel like hell and look forward to healing.

With all of these situations, we feel bad, emotional, maybe depressed......but we know it will get better.

Dare I say even with cancer, you know there is an end to the pain by either becoming cancer free or leaving this world sooner than you ever imagined. Either way, there is an end.

But how do we deal with pain that we know will never go away? There is no light at the end of the tunnel, only words we hear like, "you have to learn to live with it" and "you're not alone".

But we are alone, because no matter how many of us feel pain, it is a very personal thing to each individual. It may not feel like a broken limb, or the flu, or cancer, because those things hurt like hell........this pain is not as intense but it gnaws at you constantly, moving around your body unpredictable and constant. Nobody can help you and nothing can make it go away.

We go to bed at night hoping we can sleep through, and knowing that when we wake up, we have to find the strength to fight through another day.

I was a social butterfly, a good friend, a fun mom, a professional woman, energetic and generally happy with the way I looked. I never worried about being alone, it wasn't possible!

Just years later, I only speak to friends that drop me an email or a text every once in a while, friends that are ok with the fact that I say we need to get together soon and then never do. I am too tired and depressed to get dressed and go see anyone.....or do anything at all. I have lost everyone I know because I try to be the girl they knew and tell them that I will be there or call them soon, but never do. I don't even post anything online because I have nothing good to say. It would all sound pathetic and sad. Nobody wants to be around a person that is always in pain or always down. I am alone.

My lovely teenage daughter goes on outings with her friends families, she spends a lot of time with her friends, but she always fears leaving me at home by myself. I don't want to make her feel like I don't want her home with me, but I encourage her to go because I want her to be out having fun and not at home around someone like me. She even worries about me when I go to bed because she has heard the moaning and crying that comes from my room when I am asleep. She fears that I will drown in my own blood and never wake up because my nose bleeds so heavily and I have woken up a few times choking and spitting out more than a mouthful of it.

I can't hide anything from her no matter how hard I try since she is a highly sensitive and intuitive child. It's a burdon to her when it comes to me. I wish I could jump in the car and take her to Seattle and go shopping or to a park. I have all these moments in my head but can't carry them out. I have put my pain and depression aside many times to be able to go out and have fun with her, but I always remember how hard it is and over time, I guess I've let myself stop trying. Mostly because I feel like I can. My heart hurts when I think of the day that she is off on her own, and I'll look back and feel all the guilt and pain that will smother me because I missed so many great moments with her. For a long time I thought I could just miss these times for awhile and rest so I could get better. I believed I would, but I haven't.

At work, people look at me with angry eyes because I am always leaving early or coming in late, or not at all. They don't understand and they don't know me. They just see someone they can't rely on. I don't know how much longer I can have a job.

Obviously I don't have a boyfriend or a husband. I don't have the energy to be attractive. Pain has changed me so much that I don't even know what kind of man I would want to be with. And the few times I have tried to have a relationship these past few years, they all wanted more than I had to give. Of course I always resented them saying that because if I had anything to give anyone, it would be my daughter! I'm sick and I know it. It's a lot to ask of someone to understand when they weren't with you when you were you. That person would be meeting me with a first impression of the sick me, and thats not the kind of guy I need.......a guy that is attracted to a girl that is sick.

I can't see the light, it used to be ahead of me no matter where I was, but it burned out. How can I express all of this with no uplifting words to wrap it all up? This is how life is right now and I am trying to feel it all so that maybe I will get angry enough or bored enough to jump right out of it and somehow make my mind tell my body that it doesn't hurt anymore.

If I feel this way at 37, does that mean I will never grow old? Most people don't give the elderly enough understanding or sympathy because once they hit a certain point in their age, they begin to feel this exact pain and they have to live with it and adjust their lives to meet it's demands. I assume, since that is expected when we become old, they don't feel as much anger or sadness about their body changing because it's nature and they expect it. They have so many people around them going through the same thing so they're not alone in it.

I feel ridiculous being so "poor me". I feel like I don't have the right. I know there are others, many others, going through the same thing but I don't know many and they're not around. It would be amazing to have friends that were in this situation but I would hope for people that somehow found the positive in it. I couldn't bare to be around someone that felt the way I feel now. It would break me.