Juggling

It’s been a strange week. Sometimes, when people ask you “How was your week?” you can answer quickly, confidently, “My week has been great thanks, and yours?” or “Fucked. Shithouse. Don’t ask.” This week has not been one of those weeks. This week has been the kind of week where, when asked “How was your week?”, you have to consider your answer before speaking, weighing up the good and bad of the week before giving an answer. This week I have felt overwhelmingly that I am juggling all these glass balls are up in the air, watching them hovering, threatening to come crashing down at any moment as I cling on and try to cope.

Ball #1: pain
This week I have managed the dubious achievement of having every part of my body in pain at some stage. Last Thursday, where this missive begins, I fell down the fucking stairs. I had ducked upstairs to go to the toilet and in my haste, as I was quite literally going to wet myself if I didn’t go to the toilet that instant, I left my stick in my bedroom and took the stairs on my own. On the sixth step from the bottom I misjudged the distance and placed my foot right on the edge of the step, my centre of gravity on the wrong side of that edge. Down I tumbled. My arms instinctively reached out to break my fall: one gripped the banister tighter as I slithered down the stairs, the other went to my side, attempting to act like a brake against the carpet. Both had little effect. As I slid down the stairs I started laughing, maniacally, thinking about the spectacle I must look.

On Monday I had a killer migraine, on the fucking train no less, that saw me lying down across the long seat all the way to the city. I got a taxi home, took a caffergot (100mg of caffeine… just like a punch in the heart) and a sedative and collapsed into bed. Then I puked. I slept for four hours, waking at 8pm, in time for a very nutritious dinner of just-add-water-style noodles, before going to bed shortly after.

And then there’s the perpetual, and totally inexplicable, pain in my back and legs. While it is true that my legs have bothered me considerably less of late, they are still painful on the odd occasion. This fact would be greeted joyously if it weren’t for my back’s total overcompensation in the pain department. What’s worse is that it’s so fucking inconsistent. On Tuesday night it hurt so much that I had tears in my eyes, on the verge of a full-on cry, and no amount of any drug would do anything to dull the pain. Wednesday, on the other hand, was pretty much pain free. Today was pretty good too, still sore but bearable. WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT!?

Ball #2: depression
That segues nicely into the second ball, depression and its associated fun extras. As the back situation trundles forth into the land of the unknown, depression is creeping back into my life, ever so slowly. It is not the big bad blanket of despair that once it was; it’s a little more subtle than that. I have very little motivation to get work done, something I cannot afford to do since my workable time is so limited with my fucking back dictating when I can and cannot work. I often feel an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, which is then replaced by an overwhelming irritability in which I can’t fucking stand anyone’s shit and really only want to talk to or otherwise communicate with a handful of close friends.

The worst part of this ball is that in the last fortnight or so I have had the temptation to cut myself again. It hasn’t been particularly strong, but it is there nonetheless, and that scares the shit out of me. I haven’t picked up a knife or a razor, and very soon after the temptation crosses my mind I dismiss it as ridiculous, but it scares me.

Ball #3: existential angst
As I lay in bed, meditating, with the electric blanket on full and a hot water bottle over my chest, my mind wanders to such questions as “Why me?”, “What have I done to deserve this?”, “When will it end?”, “How will it end?”, “Where is God in all of this?”, “Does He care?”. I can’t feel God anymore. Maybe it’s because I’m a perpetually drug-fucked state, maybe it’s something else, but this is getting very lonely.

Ball #4: school work
Since I have missed so many classes and lectures, I am now a little behind in my subjects. Not only that, I have a 2000 word English essay due in a little over a fortnight. That I haven’t started. With my haphazard ability to walk or sit up comfortably, coupled with my occasional blue-tinted worldview, the likelihood of my writing a winning essay is pretty fucking slim.

Ball #5: I have no time for a breakdown
With all this shit happening, I just don’t have time for this. I have things to do, people to see, places to go, essays to write. I think I need a good hug and a cry. But as I am not one to cry at the drop of a walking stick, this is much easier said than done.

So many people have said that they admire my strength, but I don’t feel particularly strong. I guess I must have some strength or I would have given up long ago, but the truth is that at the moment I don’t have much choice in the matter… I either hang on any way I can or I end it all. And I don’t want to die, I want to live, which actually makes this harder because I really do have no other option. But this isn’t much of a life. If it hasn’t cleared up by the end of the exam period I am considering Drastic Measures. Like demanding an MRI. Or heroin. Somehow I will get through this… I just have no idea how.