Obligated

I feel somehow obligated to put up a post, to talk about what's going on with me. But I don't have anything to say. I can't get up quickly, or slowly, and I can't bend over or else I lose my balance. I smacked my head into the closet door yesterday and nearly went down on the Ikea rug. The shakes are worse and are making it hard to type or use the mouse. I can't tell if the lymphedema is worsening because of the lithium or the deteriorating stockings because I can't afford new ones. And I forgot to eat dinner last night. It sat there right next to me, but I kept forgetting it was there. Jb tried to make me eat it. I just put it in the fridge. I am ... nowhere. I see the psych and therapist on Wednesday. Until then, I remain tired (I'm not sleeping well), unmotivated, and I feel like an old lady at 33. It's wearing on me. On a scale of 1-10 today, 10 being the best I've ever felt, which is more like a 12 when I'm hypo, I'd say I'm walking around at about a 3.

(Dis)Orientation

This is like a meta discussion in graduate school: talking about talking about the disorientation that I've been dealing with. When I discuss it, it's always in the context of what I did while disoriented: nearly took a header off the front porch, fell into my car, fell headfirst into the bed. But I feel like what I should be talking about is what it feels like to have to talk about "the spins" or this rolling deck type motion that comes over me.

I hate having to discuss this. It makes me feel weak. This whole situation makes me feel weak and small, and at times, I hate myself for being this way. "The spins" are getting worse. I can hardly make it into the bathroom late at night. I nearly fell in the tub the other day. There are so many near misses. When it snows, I will surely bust my ass on the paving stones. Jb has taken to walking behind me, as if he'd catch me if I fall. He watches me, to make sure I make it in the door, up the steps, across the yard. And all I'm able to say about it is, "I can't help it."

For the most part, I don't want to talk about what's happening to me. I had a professor who told me that even silence is a form of rhetoric, and so it is. My silence says that I am, in some small place, ashamed. This is even worse now that I've started getting the shakes. When Jb and I go out for a smoke, I start to shiver and my hands start shaking. As it's coming on fall here, he's right to ask me if I'm cold. And sometimes, I say, "Yes," and sometimes, I say, "No" -- without any more explanation than that, though the true answer is always, "No."

All this silence, all this guilt, over a year since I went on FMLA at work. Around six months since the hospital, and in some ways, I'm worse. How can BP show up at 33 and just wreck your life? Oh, I know, I know. The signs were there. I made excuses. I didn't see them. But if they were spikes in the Richter scale of my life, this breakdown was the Big One. And yet, I still don't know how to talk about how I talk about it.