Life in the Slow Lane

I had a weird moment. My partner and I were teasing each other and suddenly launched at him to tickle and my metamore goes “I’ve never seen you move that fast”…..

Fibromyalgia has taken a lot. I feel like a sloth. My brain is just as foggy as my movements. It seeps into the crevices of your bones and scratches away at your muscles. I’m trapped in a body I never wanted, but that’s the game we play.

Sleep is still elusive. Even with the piles of medications I take. I slept for six hours today. Not including the 12 hours of sleep I got at night.

I’m doing what I can with where I am and what is happening. I just wish that showed more.

Rage Mechanics

It’s interesting the journey I’ve taken from self conscious baby to self confident adult. In looking into and being a part of intersectional spaces that respect pain and suffering and rally together I’ve found so much strength in experiences. I’ve learned a different kind of respect for myself and for individuals. I’ve learned how emotions can be tools to help you through memories. Anger is something powerful that shouldn’t be suppressed or policed. When you tell someone not to be angry about abuse or persecution you’re telling them to stay quiet. To keep letting the abusers be the voices of their experience.

Rage has helped me to stand strong against unhealthy people and situations. Rage is scary. It’s unwanted. People turn and run from it.

It is powerful and so can be consuming. If not careful it can be unleashed in small disputes that are better settled with care. But baby don’t lose that power. Don’t let them lessen your fire.

Everyone settles and moves on in their own way. Some have a space to vent, a space for thought, a space for quiet… In turn every one chooses to see the world and issues a certain way. Some are unyielding in their own views and block understanding by refusing to understand any other. That’s priveledge.

But who cares. Some people are merely a shit stain of your past. Some people don’t deserve anything but your rage.

Rape

Wow. Tell some more about how to feel and respond about the rape you did to me and continue to deny. Your condescending tone will get you far, as proven by your life.

Magic

I’m not sure how to feel everyday. I’m uncomfortable with everything. Life. My body. Other people’s bodies. With speech and words. Moving and watching and being. Agoraphobia dictates a lot right now. I become overwhelmed and light headed even being down stairs in the apartment too long. I hate the city I’m in. The state. I’m so far from very few things I understand. I feel like I’m boxed up into this barely breathable trunk I’ve locked myself into in order to break out eventually for a magic trick. But I’m claustrophobic. And when did the trick involve water seeping into the trunk? Am I going to drown? Am I going to die like this? As this person?…

Death isn’t so much a possibility or eventual happenstance. It’s a reality. A truth. I feel I know I’ll take my own life but it’s a matter of how fucked up do I leave the people around me. When I say it’s their support and presence that keep me going I mean it’s an uncomfortable pressure that’s always felt. What is life except constant fear and displacement? Never rising above the breathable line of water the buoyancy of the salt in the ocean gives you. Despite your body wanting to sink. How do you tell your loved ones you don’t know how to live? Not that you want to die but that you just don’t know how to exist? That… you don’t understand how to keep putting those aching feet one in front of the other every fucking day…..

Pain is not an acceptable topic to bring up. Physical and especially mental. Despite the constant ebb and flow of fibromyalgia pain, I have a constant ebb and flow of emotional turmoil that leaves me breathless sometimes. When did I get so weak? When did everything become so much?

Questions I can only echo to myself.

Here. This is for you.

People from my past have a habit of reaching out again. Many people. Mostly men. Men who didn’t really know me but glorified their presence in my life. Men who ‘miss the way I feel’. Men who’s failed engagements left them with what ifs. ‘You were always so kind’. ‘I remember your humor’.

Here. I’ll reach out to one.

After threatening to kill me. After holding me hostage with suicide. After threatening to kill any person who came through the door. After the rape you so sorely ignore. Stealing journals holding scraps of my life that you to this day describe in detail but deny having. Why would you ever think you deserved any other part of me. I can make peace with my demons without giving them further line to hang me. Your reality is a sick fantasy of which you refuse to acknowledge. I want no part. I unfortunately can’t forget the part of my life you’re in, so instead I take from it what I can and I live on. Without you ever being in my life again.

I owe nothing to anyone but myself. I owe myself healthier decisions than I made in the past. I owe myself healthier people in my life. I owe myself the healthiest life I can have and that’s what I’m doing.

I’m doing me and nothing else.

We are… the youth of the nation?

A lot. Just. So much has happened. I find writing to be quite difficult now a days. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia a year ago I think. I’ve become very disabled. I struggle to even make food for myself a lot. I was in three car accidents within a year. Each time totalling the car. The car accidents didn’t harm my body much more than the fibro did, but it caused me to lose my job each time. I went through traumatic circumstances involving animal abuse and ended up have to leave California. My family and I were stalked, threatened and doxed. Just how the world works I guess. I’m currently isolates, disabled and trying to get any little grip on my life I can with little support. Pain has been constant and sometimes excruciating. Fibromyalgia is like waking up with 50lbs weights on your shoulders. Every day.

Pain and illnesses are difficult subjects for a lot of people so I’ve lost many contacts who can no longer listen and understand. It’s fine.

So Forgetable.

What’s the point. Where does it end? The unending shit storm that fucks up any and everything. I get one step up and get thrown down the whole flight if stairs. I’m not meant to walk up them. I’ll die before I reach the top.

So what. I’m supposed to survive until the mean time? What have I got to show? I’m 27 and I have no idea where to go. How to fucking live. How to make money. Im not thriving. I havent ever. I’ve gotten comfprtable with surroundings and made do. But I’ve never thrived. I probably never will. I’m too fucked up. I’m too handicapped. I’m too dependant. I’m too obtuse. I’m be forever and irrelevant stitch in time that will fall away from remembrance.

Its okay. I guess. Ive excepted I will never make anything of myself. I’ll never go anywhere. My life will be an endless struggle for nothing.

Practice.

Thoughts. Words. Construction. Type. Wall. Avoidance. Dance. Redo.

I’m working on practicing reading and writing daily to help with my problems and it often feels like driving in traffic. Drive. Stop. Drive again. Stop. Drive. Pick up speed. Stop.

I don’t remember when this got so hard. When did I stop making time? When did I stop having drive for this? For books and reading? Even now I write a sentence, stop and stare off for several minutes, the wrench myself back to the screen to force my thoughts through my fingers and scrape out whatever I can manage.

A cat’s begging for attention. A bird repeats “hello” to me. A dog barks incessantly in the yard.

Feelings of solace changed over the years to restraints and barriers. Anxiety ridden links to a fence I’m reluctantly unchaining. Whats good for you isn’t usually whats easiest.

All’s quieter. Time ticks closer to work and I’m frustrated there isn’t more.

The Brain Deceives.

Do you remember the moment you could read? The moment symbols change to words. Can you recall when you understood how to write? Did your mind click? Did you feel the point of understanding? Did it seem like a long drawn out journey or did you simply come into knowing?

I’m struggling. For once not too overly with depression or anxiety. But with something else in my mind. Something I’ve struggled with since before I felt mental illness. Something that grows stronger the further away from reading and writing I get.

I might have dyslexia. Or another learning disability. I find without constant practice of reading it becomes more and more difficult to do. The words on pages and screens reverberate and move away from glare. I can’t focus. I can’t keep drive to work past the movement. I feel like I can’t read. And my drive to write shrinks with my ability to read.

Two things that once upon a time brought me great escape are now ancient memories. Something elders talked about to their children’s children. I don’t remember how to unlock these runes. How to decipher the magic behind the words and bring back the joy.

Even know this stupid post has taken me 3+ hours to write. Something that used to come so easily. It’s like All the voices in my head can’t fucking agree on what to focus on. On what ideas and words to send to my finger tips. I’m reminded of lifelong feelings of ineptitude.

What are you good for? Absolutely nothing…

I used to think, at least I can do manual labor. But it would appear as usual my body gives me away. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself anymore.

As of late.

Sitting in a coffee shop, overly focused on unimportant articles on my phone, I numb out everything to whisk myself away for as long as I can. Maybe if I don’t move the world won’t continue on. Maybe if I keep myself distracted the day will stay paused. Maybe if I ignore everything long enough I’ll stay in this imaginary vacuum and life will be forced to wait with me…..

I know stress induces these obsessive cycles where I find myself struggling to break away from mundane excuses even just to pee. I can’t think today. I don’t want to finish the day. I don’t want to do tomorrow. I just want to forget everything and sit in this spot until I turn to dust.

I was recently told I most likely have Dyslexicia. And to be honest it makes a lot of sense. Diagnosies bring clarity. I understand now what’s wrong with me. What’s been wrong with me. I have a word to describe my difficulties to a T. But I just want to cry. The years of struggle and avoidance of education because I felt too dumb to pursue anything I saw myself being interested in enough weigh down on me. Anxiety is hard enough. Depression is hard enough. ADHD and OCD and PTSD are hard enough.

I feel dumped on. The universe has been trying to tell me something for years and I just kept thinking I was normal enough not to have to listen. My mother thought I was normal enough for her not to put money into realizing what’s wrong with her child. So I struggle with feeling like I’m worth that money now.

$1200. Just to be tested. Just to affirm diagnosies. Just to be able to say “yep. I’ve got this”. Seems idiotic and wasteful. It’s not. Because I could take advantage of programs associated with schooling to help me get a degree. So helpful, yes, but worth it? I’ve never felt worthy of anything my entire life. And the never ending cycle of new problems with me just remind me that the universe doesn’t really care about a fleshy speck in the spectrum. I’m insignificant to the grand scheme of things. There is no higher power or righteous reason. There is no purpose or objective lesson. I’m just a fucked up almost 30 year old with developmental disabilities I’ve never learned to work with.

I don’t claim to be special. I keep thinking “there are so many who have it worse. Get over yourself”. But I know that’s just as unhealthy an ideal as feeling worthless.

I just keep finding it hard to break away from this cozy vacuum of space and time where I remain distracted by the insignificancies of the world.