Thursday, March 27, 2014

My Reality

A lot has happened since my last post to this blog. I am now disabled. I am unable to work and my life is doctors appointments, legal disputes, pain management, and just trying to get by day to day. I am fortunate to be cared for financially by a friend and lover. I hate that I am dependent though. Recently returned from Jamaica I have to get something off my chest. I am going to keep this simple but this is what I realized while I was there.

I could easily fill up pages about how I feel right now. Many of you know that I have been depressed for some time now. This winter has been very hard and I am not through it yet. Few of you know the depths of the depression or even the source of it. Its not my intent to communicate with guilt or to be passive aggressive. I require nothing from you but at the same time realize that I need all of you. I realize that its not any of your fault that I feel this way. You have lives. You are going to get busy. Our lives are a self-serving rat race. If you can't keep up then you get trampled. Its not your fault that I fall between the cracks. Its the fault of our social culture. I hate this ideology that we exist in because it treats its most needy of individuals as if they are the lowliest lifeforms.

I feel invisible. I feel abandoned. I don't feel like I have a stable support structure. I feel like I have no future and that I am kidding myself that this pirate life could be my future because it depends on others wanting the exact same thing. I am discouraged because I feel like my friends are scattered and distracted.

I kid myself that I have friends. Some of my friendships seem to exist on Facebook alone. In truth I hate Facebook because it allows people to be lazy and not invest in people. There was a time that I spent every evening with a different person. Someone I cared about. That was worth driving to see but it never seemed to be reciprocated. Once I got sick, first cancer- I thought I had it beat but a mistake made by a surgeon left me with fibromyalgia. Arthritis from sports injuries and over-use. Potentially lupus.

This is my reality now. My future is dependent on others. My survival is dependent on others. My day to day care and livelihood is dependent on others. My health and well-being is dependent on others. Because I am dependent on others my quality of life is never going to be like it once was. Coming to terms with that is harder than any of you realize. My quality of life has to be adjusted. I have to settle. I don't get to make decisions about what I want or what I would like my life to be like because I have to depend on assistance or contributions of others. So I have to stick to base needs only because it is no one's responsibility to care for me.

I am grateful and humbled by those who contribute to my quality of life and enrich it. I am trying to be satisfied by just what I am given, but it is hard because I remember being able to do things myself. I remember not needing anyone's help. People expect me to be positive. To "hang in there" or "cheer up" but I feel like all that encouragement is just bullshit so they don't have to deal with how devastating a life change like this truly is. I try daily to see it as a fresh start but how could it be a fresh start if I am still clinging to a life that I used to love.

I am not excited about the pirate season for the first time in 6 years. Why? Because people don't know how to be kind and generous to each other without expectation. There is drama all the time despite attempts to be NO DRAMA because life here in the states is always "survival of the fittest". Its competitive because our individual self worth is dependent on us being "better' than the other guy. This is our social culture as Americans. I feel discouraged and lack the energy to try to change that.

1 comment: