Being the broken doll

I am so, so tired.  Sometimes it feels like I’m dying, so impossibly slowly.  So much pain, crisis after crisis.  Not enough time to come up for air.  No-one who can make it stop, no-one who can even get my life under control – clean the house, get rid of the ever-present mould that makes every nerve feel like a swarm of tiny insects. 

My grandmother is treating me like a burden now, an onerous obligation.  She invites me to dinner, then leaves me to eat alone while she talks to others on the telephone.  At first I was insulted, angry.  Then I realised that she means it.  Take it or leave it, like it or lump it.  I’m only there because she feels obliged to feed me once a week. 

My only uncle emails his entire extended family, down to the children of his cousins, to announce the birth of his first grandchild, and somehow forgets me.  My aunt schedules a date to plan the family reunion with me, and then forgets. 

Oh sure, I could accuse myself of cherry-picking evidence, but I’m not really.  Being treated like this is not unusual, it’s the norm.  I’m not even surprised at that.  I really don’t see any reason to deny that I am, all things considered, a burden.  I’m not claiming to be a bad person or an intrinsically incompetent one, just chronically ill.  I’m not providing anyone with anything worth as much as my living uses up.  And even if I were, my illness keeps me dependent, so that what I give is not valued.  I can’t just leave and go elsewhere.  I cannot make myself scarce enough to be missed. 

These difficulties are not mine alone.  I imagine they’re shared by most people whose illnesses force them to rely on others. 

I once worked in a hospital which had been an institution for the severely disabled.  It had a long and horrendous history of abuse of its patients.  The weak, the defenceless, the dependent… they attract abusers, they attract abuse, my boss explained in a whisper. 

You might think chronic suffering would attract sympathy.  Perhaps it instead activates the impulse to sneak up and quietly wring the neck of the endlessly whimpering thing.  Restore peace.