Shifty-Eyed Evader or Unblinking Intimidator?

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I See Your Soul

No Shifty-Eyed Evader here and while I don’t think I am an Unblinking Intimidator I am definitely much closer on that scale. I’d give myself at least an 85 percent of looking into people’s souls through their eyes, maybe 100 percent. If you are a Shifty-Eyed Evader, I won’t stay long enough to make eye contact. Eyes are so important to me. Shifty-Eyed Evader? You don’t stand a chance with me. I read a lot from people’s eyes, I am intuitive and I get a sense of who you are FROM your eyes. If you don’t look directly at me? I will be gone faster than you can even blink, shifty-eyed or not.

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.

say narrow-angled glaucoma 5x fast on pain meds

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my head is aching, laser like thunder striking inside my brain and down the right side of my face in a fast repetitive motion. don’t move, there, up, left, stay still. darts are being thrown directly into my eye by this rapid fire machine gun. a special hateful drop is given to me at the end for my shattered eye, throwing me, head first, down the crooked, chipped stairs straight to a migraine in progress.  doctor had to cut iris, no anasthesia and it was right near the nerves of my eye. lucky us fibromyalagia patients come prepared, had one old pain pill in my crusty, gray bag that has too many confusing pockets. the medicine did nothing. i have been suffering for too long,  in twenty years, my dr. boasts he has never had a patient like me before. i feel like i should at least win a prize or break down and cry uncontrollably. maybe both.

i am finally home in bed now but my right eye is glued shut and i am not allowed to open this eye tonight. i am cold and have winter blankets trying to protect me from pain and chills but they don’t do a great job, yet they are trying so hard. blame me, i cry, blame me. i am the arbiter of all diseases chronic and unknown and erratic, unusual, the  “rarely happens to……” it is not surprising that i don’t i feel special; tonight i have plenty of pity. problems with my eyes, ears, tmj, chronic pain, joint pain, foot pain, all the time. struggling not to become one with the symptoms but i feel like i’m wrestling with myself in thick, mixture of quicksand and mud. once in a while i want to just sink deep and let my breath come out slowly and simply float on top. i am tired of fighting, i’m tired of the pain.  i just want the pain concerto to cease playing. tonight i feel pain on my pain. if my head wasn’t above the blankets i would hide beneath them, though crying is difficult with just one eye.

who is this young stranger i ask from three feet and thirty years back. the one that used to shimmy in tight jeans and black leotards and confidence amid conversations of the psyche and e.e.cummings and the book review section of the ny times. i was a traveling girl until they clipped our wings; but most of all i was a dreamer.

my dog is sleeping peacefully on my feet. i woke up at 4 am today, perhaps with nerves but also with an incredibly optimistic attitude. optimism kicked me again in the face like a feisty pony named speed. i didn’t see the pain coming, speed kicked me from behind and sent me flying to the ground bruising every bone. every already aching bone and muscle.

i have all these strange, out of the ordinary afflictions but special is not something i feel. now i feel sad and sulky and in miserable pain. music which usually calms me grates on my raw nerves. stop complaining, i admonish, this is not life-threatening but it is painful and lonely as all hell. i miss my husband’s reassuring voice and soft, gentle hugs. i know i can survive on my own, always knew that, but it is nicer when he is there beside me, and not on a business trip, gently reaching for my hand. i miss normalcy if i even remember what that feels like.

i look forward to slow down the grumbling monster that is the pain in my head and shooting  down half my face. why am i not normal. why are there bizarre afflictions attracted to me like bees to golden honey. i am too tired to shoo them away because i have been robbed of energy. so they stay, circling me, viscious black buzzards landing only for their meal and my life.