Late to My Own Funeral

Well, so far it's fun being an angst filled teenager. It's better than being a bitter old woman. I can claim I only want to complain, but I don't really. The shameful truth is that I do want to be happy. Or, in deference to certain philosophers who make sense when they say happiness is impossible, I want to be at peace. The 15-year-old covers her eyes with her hand, and pretends to be with someone else. I totally sympathize, but I'm afraid I have to be sincere at this point. I have to do the one thing I really don't want to do. I have to accept my illness.

In further proof that this year has been one slow revolution around nothing, I keep coming back to acceptance. I've had moments of acceptance in the past. They are beautiful moments.  At the very bottom of your misery, and realize you just have to give up trying to change it. I really believe that something sees that white flag, and comes to help you, even if it's just a part of yourself. These moments are real and cathartic and even dramatic in their own way. I've usually mistook these moments for the real thing. I thought, "Now that's over! Now I won the spiritual acceptance game! Can I get back to my real life now?" And I went back to my primary occupation, which is waiting to get better.

And I keep waiting, and waiting, and all of a sudden my patience wears out, and I can't wait that long anymore. Here comes the 15-year-old: I have to live my life! I want my life to feel like a life again! It's my life, God dammit, my shitty, mundane, disabled real life. And it's not my illness that has made it so small, it's my lack of imagination. Or rather, it's the profusion of imagination in the wrong place.

I can imagine the future easily, that's where I am young and strong and winning everything constantly always. And I can clearly see multiple parallel universes and all the fun and friends I have in them.  It's in this reality right now where I can't imagine doing anything else but lying in my bed reading a book I'm sort of into. Acceptance must mean more than this. You can live with something, but still have it hurt you every day.

This year hasn't been a total wash. I've gotten into some good things. I've read a lot of books . I have tried to let go of the life I used to live, but I haven't replaced it with very much. I've been resting, and I've been grieving, and that is a process to respect. Right after you get hit by a car and you're lying on the pavement semi-conscious and bleeding is not the time to write poetry about it. But now I want the mourning to be over. The life I had is dead. I went to the funeral, saw it in its coffin, but I still persist in pretending it's alive and walking around with it like it's the corpse in "Weekend at Bernie's." I want to put it down, but I'm not exactly sure how. I don't know what to replace it with. The closest I've been able to come to grabbing my disabled life by the balls is writing personal essays about how much I would like to grab my disabled life by the balls. I guess it's a start.

What the Internet Needs is More Complaining

So, maybe I'll start blogging again. After more than a year, a stranger on the Internet reminded me of its existence, and I went back to read what I had been publicly thinking a year ago. I had been housebound for a few months back then, and I was trying to get a handle on the idea that my seven-year-long illness wasn't going away. I was angry and desperate, but I was also sincerely trying to find peace and acceptance. I was also trying to prove that I had it together, that despite physical challenges I, unlike you other Internet sickos, was using my pain as a platform for astronomical spiritual growth and one day I would be healthy and free and look back on that time that I healed myself from CFS by fearless blogging.

Well, needless to say, fuck all that. I'm starting again because a year later, I'm still sick and I haven't come to terms with it. My world has gotten very small and I need more than anything to make it bigger. I didn't want to make my home in the Internet community of the chronically ill, full of desperation and indignation and not-funny black humor, but here I am.

 So read my fearless blog, by which I will heal myself of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome! It is now the angst-filled livejournal that I was too shy to keep in Jr. High. My fifteen-year-old self is Editor-in-Chief, and there is no amount of rage, jealousy, or self-pity that doesn't make her feel more articulate. I don't want to give anyone advice anymore. The idea of being a wise, good invalid makes me nauseous. My goal for this new blog is to be mortified with embarrassment when I read it in a few years. I will tell you all the shit that I am not serenely okay with about being a 29-year-old invalid. I will try to make it interesting, but no promises. I will feel better for having written it, and you, for having read it, might feel much worse. Is it okay, to make people feel bad because I feel bad? Well, you can go outside and take a walk, you healthy motherfucker, I don't pity you. Or, if you're one of us, how could I possibly make you feel worse than you already feel?

Thus absolved, I will continue. Stay tuned for unhappy excavation of my fascinating life.