The human crutch

Delayed entry: OD is down.

 

Why am I here?  It’s 3am and I really am tired.  But the pain is still more intense than the tiredness.  Sad truth of it.  This is ridiculous, it really is.  Who lives like this?  And why?

 

I don’t think any of my family or friends have any idea what my life is actually like, living with this pain.  Even my naturopath didn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation when I told her that I’d woken up in pain every single day of the last month.  She thought, in fact, that it might be a good time to experiment with reducing the anti-inflammatory supplements.  Which are the only things that have ever worked to reduce the pain. 

 

Two days later I had to drive over to buy more supplements when I was in so much pain I could barely walk.  Pain level 5-6.  Over an hour, round trip.  But I get the sense that no-one knows what that means.  Oh, I’m sure I’m not the only one to ever be in pain.  It’s just that everyone around me seems to have no idea what I’m talking about.  Are they just closeting themselves in a comfortable state of rosy-coloured denial?  Or can they actually not fathom chronic, unrelenting pain? 

 

Maybe it’s denial.  Perhaps they just don’t want to know what it’s really like.  Am I selfish for wanting them to acknowledge my suffering? 

 

I watched “The Rage in Placid Lake” on SBS this evening.  Strangely, it reminded me of my parents.  They’re not hippies by any stretch of the imagination.  But oddly enough, in their own way they’re a part of that generation.  Maybe it’s not group therapy, weed and meditation, but it’s house-church and Christian counselling seminars and prayer healing circles.  Really, tell me that’s different. 

 

It’s the same focus on self-improvement to the detriment of anything interpersonal.  Self-improvement, with ‘self’ being the operative word.  And they’re far more involved in the lives of their new friends than they ever were in their children’s.  I don’t really understand how they can have compassion for their friends without having compassion for their children.  Maybe living with the brats for twenty-plus years does that to you.  But why are they oblivious to their children’s difficulties when they seem so responsive to those of their friends? 

 

I know this is all nonsense.  The hurt, the misplaced sense of need.  The perception that acknowledgement from another person would somehow help.  The ugly face of a sense of entitlement, peering out of the cracks.  The human crutch.  That’s what it is. 

 

If you need another person, you are not whole.  It’s true.  I know because it was written by men who made a lot of money writing books.  Spiritual men, even.  “Social animals” be damned.  No, monkish animals are we.  Without needs or frailties.  So perfectly whole that even sex becomes platonic.  Sex between smiling people who never need to experience anything raw, wretched or twisted. 

 

Good god, what’s behind this pain anyway?  It IS absurd.  How can I expect anyone else to believe it when it seems absurd even to me?  No-one else I know has this endo pain, so why do I?  I worked on releasing past-life residues, like Mich</st1:pl

ace>ael told me.  Well, it hasn’t worked so far.  I watch a tense movie and the pain comes back.  I’m afraid to ask again.  I’m afraid they’ll say it isn’t curable; that they lied the first time.  Or that they really don’t know; health advice isn’t their strong suit, but they might have a stab at it anyway. 

 

My life is so defined by my illness that to redefine the illness is to redefine my life.  That’s why I’m so afraid to let someone else do so.