If you get up every morning and go to work-I applaud you!
Most of my days start with work, but I don’t have to go farther than my own property to discharge my duties.
But today I had to get going extra early for a doctor’s appointment with a specialist about 50 miles away. So I rushed through my morning chores, double-checked I had everything I needed and left home by 7:10.
I had to park in a parking garage-no easy feat when you drive a full-size pickup and the spaces are designed for mid-size cars. The low roof, confined space and limited light make me feel trapped and uncomfortable.
Every time I have to fill out health paperwork there is always a question or two that makes me think of Dominic. I shake off the beginnings of tears and wait to be called back.
My blood pressure is higher than it usually is and I’m a bit heavier than last time I was there-both things that make me feel like a failure and add to the voice in my head that says, “You aren’t good enough. You are doing something wrong or this wouldn’t have happened to you.”
My disease is progressing and although my doctor is kind, and patient, and fully aware of the fact that I’ve buried a child, she broaches once again a treatment option that has more risk but potentially greater efficacy.
I’m just not ready to take the leap.
So my anxiety mounts as I think of both alternatives: Submitting myself to a new treatment that may have grave consequences or giving in to the inevitable limitations that rheumatoid arthritis is imposing on my life.
She graciously puts off the decision for another three months but I know I won’t be in any better position to make it then either. I’m paralyzed now when I have to decide these kinds of things-torn between “doing what’s best” and “what difference will it make?”
Bloodwork means waiting in a area next to the infusion clinic and hematology departments and I am surrounded by people that are in dire straits. Once more, between the waiting and the thinking, I’m ready to be out of there.
When I get back to my truck, what had looked like a pretty good place to park has become a nightmare. Another truck beside me and two parked opposite have closed the space I should have had to get out to the bare minimum. And someone is waiting for my spot.
Oh, joy!
I try.
I really try to figure out how to get too much vehicle out of too little space.
Finally, in tears, I step out of my truck (now in what I think is an impossible position) and raise my hands in the air-I give up! You win!
The kind man that was waiting steps out of his car and guides me backward and forward (4 turns!) until I am free from the awful predicament. I thank him and keep going.
Before Dominic left us this day would have seemed like a tiny blip on the radar of life. It certainly wouldn’t have brought me to tears.
But the energy required to simply get up and get going in the wake of losing him means that I have so much less to spend on anything else.
I don’t suffer from anxiety.
I’m not depressed.
But there are many moments throughout the day when I am anxious or sorrowful.
One minute I’m fine. And then a series of events, phone calls or memories pile one atop the other until they become a load I can no longer bear.
It feels like I am always behind, always short on resources, always close to tears.
And no matter how hard I try, I am unable to simply “get better”. No matter how much I organize or plan or work at it, I always end up frazzled and frustrated and feeling like a failure.
I wish it wasn’t like this-this added burden in addition to the missing and the sorrow. Maybe it’s part of the missing and the sorrow. I don’t know.
But I’m ready for a day, a single day, when I feel just a little bit victorious..
thelifeididntchoose 