What a disaster! Some people say that we are in hell as we pass through this life. I have some times agreed and other times  resisted because I do not think that suffering is hellish in the sense Christians and other religions speak of it.

I am most definitely (in another sense of the word) in hell.

I am wracked by pain coming from all sorts of places and composed of so many different levels and perceptions of pain I am long past the stage where I could claim to to be  barely able to move. Whole days are swept into mists of pain and illness that change my personality and leave my mind struggling to form coherent thoughts and grip life.

I cannot stand the effort of writing up the modest but complex complex raft of medications that both enable my life and yet fail me by leaving me unable to have a life on any but the most imaginative of terms.

So I will not include it

My energy is sapped totally. The depth of confusion and mental incoherency destroy my emotional stability and leave me literally fighting to convince myself to hang onto life.

Waves of pain from a hip shattered in an accident. All these pain sources. A totally destroyed knee that is agonizing on its own. Whiplash injuries to my neck that make even reading a book a painful experience. My stomach burning and nauseous from medications and stress. Up and down my legs badly-healed twisted bone breaks that come alive with a savage pain of their own and don’t need any of the other elements of this nightmare to bring me to a standstill. These painkillers I have are able to soothe me if I sit still and am having an easy day and now, during a bad patch, I am shucking them down like sweets and cursing life as they fail me.

There are deep infections and tooth aches in my jaws and they wax and wane from barely comfortable to excruciating. A little household cleaner, vacuum dust or smog from a passing car and I can suddenly be fighting to breathe. Literally, at times, fighting for my life.

Diabetes and a herd of other illnesses and conditions sap my life and I am simply unable to raise the crusading spirit I need to overcome the inertia of my position and get the people I need to help me to actually help me. I am not so unhappy about dying. I am not so unhappy with the idea of dying but this is savage, filthy, painful way to end those days I have left.

I wish I could convey the mammoth effort it took to type this goddamned entry right now when I am so ill and overwhelmed with pain and nausea and weakness or the revulsion I will feel when I read it back later

There is no escaping this. It is not a movie to be sympathized with and then return to a normal existence. I cannot sleep it off or pretend I am in a happy place. The moods swings and personality warps during all this are as real as the rust on old nails. They can appear without warning in the most inconvenient times and totally overwhelm the rationality that would bring some control. There is just the afterwards. You cannot rationalize that some good is coming came of ranting, begging, or crying in the middle of a totally uneventful day.

You cannot just sit people down and explain that you seem odd and aloof or inappropriately happy because you are awash in pain and have lost your sensitivity to the finer elements of social intercourse while you you have been buried in a nonsensical waves of emotion and depression!

And I have to wonder if I am in hell and somebody just forgot to give me my copies of the incarceration papers when I died

(Note to self: rewrite this in a less self-conscious way when you feel better and can think)