The Map To Nowhere Fast

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I have a weird feeling of unrest and stress, slimy blue- green and flourescent orange winding its way around my brain is how I picture it, how I feel it. No soothing colors of white and yellow and beige. Fake colors, unnatural.  I frown more than I smile and as hard as I am trying to focus on the positive it’s not easy. There is so much going on in my life that it’s hard to focus. I don’t think it’s just me though, I think it’s a lot of people.  It’s a feeling, not a good one, somewhere between the roads of anxious and depressed, stopping at weary.

There are natural disasters all over the world and I am sure we all feel, not only heartbroken for other people, but scared. There is too much sinewy stuff whirling around and no happy place to settle. What happened to my “happy place” images? Why am I only seeing the rain battering the purple flowers instead of the blooming of the flowers alone.

There is tension inside my house, we are in “the sandwich generation” that I used to read about. It isn’t fun, it’s scary. The “baby boomers” who have restless teenagers and aging parents who are alone or ill or depressed. I am that “baby boomer” now except I have the added affliction of my own “chronic pain.” Fibromyalgia and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis do not do me any favors, I walk along slowly, painfully, I stumble through different medications and expectations. Very low expectations.

I also have narrow-angled glaucoma which is a dangerous disease or as one unfriendly opthalmologist put it “you could go blind in an instant.” Quite a bedside manner, don’t you think? Needless to say, I stopped going to him. It’s funny that I barely write about this condition, maybe it’s pure, frigid fear. Maybe there is only so much pain I can handle. My brain and eyes get hammered, with laser shocks, every few months by a doctor that I once believed was very good. I don’t think so anymore. “In twenty years of practicing, I’ve never had a patient whose eyes kept closing up like yours do.”  Every time I go to the city he lasers my eyes again, because the hole he drilled into me has closed. He does this procedure either in his office or in the hospital with no pain relief; imagine barbed wire going through your eyes and brain, quickly, twenty or thirty times in a row. The eye drop he casually puts in gives me incredibly painful headaches (migraines?) I do know that the pain I feel is barbaric, no pain medications, no anesthesia, no break. Over and over again; fast and furious.

The gray, dreary day does not help me since I feel overwrought and unfocused. I am dealing with both chronic pain, (Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis) and new back pain that feels like my back bent and broke itself during sleep like a twisted pretzel you find in any mall. I am trying to accept my life for what it is, both bad and good, often simultaneously. Change is in the air like a dog-sniffing a new scent, it’s just hard to predict when and where things will happen.

I read an article in the NY Times today about a young couple with a young daughter. Each parent has cancer. That, is a problem I say to myself, not the dreary workings of an often too-emotional, anxious and pain- filled mind. I am so sorry Nathan and Elisa. You and your baby have my prayers because perspective is the greatest gift of all. I will speak no more.

The World Is A Scary Place

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Yesterday, the sun was shining, the color of the sky was that of a red robin’s egg, a perfect speckled blue. The trees nearby danced, gently swaying, together in the light breeze like two limber young dancers. Just a moment or two later, I heard the sound of engines whirling and scraping and banging at the same time. I heard deep, angry rumbling coming from the back yard and my first thought was that there was gunfire and bombs exploding. I couldn’t move to take a very deep breath; for a second or two I couldn’t even exhale. What was I supposed to think? There is way too much angst and terror and suspicion in the world and there is no one, no one that can tell us it will be all better now or that the problem has been fixed and will never come back.

President Obama, Anyone? We need your strength and assurance now. All of us are asking questions but not getting answers.  I realize no one can promise, no one can soothe our fears and it is terrifying but I am searching for some, small, secret. A medicine for our pain. A healer to soothe our fears because I fear that I am not alone in this suffering. We all need hope and a positive role model, right now we need to feel strong and hopeful and confident. How will we ever get THAT back? I can’t watch television anymore because seeing the visions from Japan and hearing the cries remind me of the horrors in the world and I am back again at 9/11 and the airplanes crashing into buildings, people jumping, screaming, crying. Now there is one tragedy after another.

Earthquakes, terrorism, tsunami’s, mud slides, water, abductions, pedophiles, murderers, two ongoing wars, a new attack on Libya, (when was THAT approved?) hurricanes,  nuclear reactors, radiation etc. and that’s not to mention the everyday fears of health and welfare:  sickness, cancer, death, mystery illnesses, chronic pain,  MS, ALS,  Alzeimers, and so many other horrible sicknesses that we have no cure for. I feel like something has shifted in the universe and no one knows what to do or feel. The only thing I can do is try NOT to feel but that is hard and unrealistic. Right now, I feel scared and alone and helpless.

My head pounds like the sound of jack hammers on cement, throbbing with no break. I am slumped over in bed, with chronic pain and an excruciating, dark, headache. I don’t know what to do to make me feel better.  Usually if I stay in bed and am able to hide and sleep I will feel better slowly. Now? I can’t sleep soundly. The world has been sucker punched, and sleeping is no longer, my designated safe place.

I am terrified and I am probably not alone though most people don’t talk about it. It seems like a land mine that could go off anywhere, anytime and in any place. Nobody is safe anymore. We are helpless onlookers as the world changes incredibly fast. Perhaps fear is what we all know we have in common. I just wish it didn’t have to come to this to find our link to one another.