Dying Inside, Again

Diminished. Irrelevant. Unnecessary. Incapable. Right now, those are the words that describe me. My inability to engage in life, which I'm working so hard to change and thought I was improving on, is simply inadequate. Nobody's got the time or the patience to sit back and wait for me to get it together. And why would they? I've already squandered enough of both to suck up everyone's lifetime.

Is there a soul on the planet I can talk to? Because right now I feel alone and isolated, like a woman existing on an island of herself. But that island has no fruit left on her trees, and the wildlife have all swum or flown away. So I sit and stare out at the sea. Starving. Wondering if anyone is ever going to rescue me. Knowing full well they won't. I'm responsible for every ounce of my survival and can't even feed myself.

This is what year thirteen with an invisible, chronic illness has done to me. Annihilated my self-worth, estranged me from those I know and love, suppressed a life that was supposed to get lived, and turned a vibrant and capable woman into a blithering, pathetic pile of weakness.

It didn't have to be this way. It didn't have to get this bad. I could've gotten sick and not lost my mind. I could have, at least once on this thirteen-year journey, encountered a doctor who didn't treat my life-altering insomnia and muscular pain like a t-shirt I decided to don because I liked the way it felt. Is it a myth, or are there people who get this illness whose friends and family rally together and lift them up? Are those people accepted for who they have now become and not persecuted for never being enough?

I'm retreating further into myself. Every time I get this low, a piece of me dies and stays here. There's less of me to pick up and move forward with. Right now I wonder if I'll ever be able to move forward at all. Thirteen years ago my life splintered off into a parallel universe. Although it seemed like I was still part of the normal world, my truth no longer existed there. Now I'm floating in an abyss of madness existing somewhere between my truth and everybody else's world. My reality is pecking at my flesh, nibbling on my toes, eating chunks of the goodness that was once my soul. At the pace I'm going it won't be long before there's nothing left inside me at all.

Thanks for joining,

Leah