A very bad stupid day yesterday, which maybe meant I hit bottom and turned the corner from the depression. This morning coming in here w my coffee I noticed some faint negative thoughts, I mean the pissy thoughts about people whose crap makes my life even harder, but I noticed the thoughts, so there was a witness looking at my poor overloaded mind. I wrote a poem this morning. I meditated for the first time since we got back, briefly, knowing I had to do these things before the pain got bad and I took the first oxycontin, because on opiates you just don't care.
(I guess that's partly how they ruin lives. That, and the fact that they're illegal unless prescribed; and I suppose it is illegal to prescribe them just because someone likes the way they make you float and appreciate beauty. It is a stupid law that has resulted in our prisons being crammed with mostly black young men who did nothing violent, just sold drugs.)
This has all involved how hard I worked these last years to stay alive, how vigilant I was, had to be. Then what, you're walking toward the bathroom to fill your water pitcher because you have to drink 3 liters of water a day, you trip over nothing and down you go, flat, and a broken arm that is going to make every minute of your life a hassle for six weeks. One second of inattention.
It was a second during which I was thinking how unresponsive and useless dokusan had been that morning, how I wasn't going to do another one, how I just had one *&%$# day to get through, then we could go home, thinking I probably would never come back on this retreat. Yes, I had things on my mind. But I don't care what you do, you can not guarantee you won't fall. Could have struck my temple on the doorframe and been a functional vegetable the rest of my life.
It hurt, and it shocked me the way a fall can, and let loose all the misery and anxiety of these last years trying not to die. And now what? Almost a year after transplant and it's been a lousy, difficult year, not worth living. I will never have another transplant, or go on dialysis again. Done with extraordinary measures.
In all this depression there was something I decided about letting go my anxious vigilance. I don't mind dying, people - in fact, at this point I'd welcome it. God, gets me out of here. I will do what I know I have to do to (maybe) keep living, take the damn drugs 7 times a day, get labs done, drink the *&%$# water. But I'm done dragging myself through things that supposedly will protect me. I enjoy food. I will eat what I like. I find exercise boring, so today while Tom did his I walked around McConnell with my camera. Watching every *&%$# step, believe it. Enjoyed it. Well, there you are. An update. Where I'm calling from.
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p.s. It's been 12 weeks now, and the arm is still a problem, not even ready for PT to get range of motion back (Wun hopes).
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