(written on the 16th)
Fair warning: Not much positive in this post today. Best to skip. Honestly. Writing because I’m capturing what’s real for me right now, and I think my reality shouldn’t be hidden, regardless of how embarrassing or frustrating or discouraging or whatever it might be to myself and/or others.
Anyway…
Really rough night last night.
My spine issues have gotten super bad lately. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that. Such a hard time getting sleep with every position hurting. My neck issues give me pain and tingling down both arms, and all the way to my fingers, along with pain down my upper back, and my back issues cause pain in my middle and lower back, and now, in addition to the hip, knee, ankle, and pudendal pain, I can now add some pretty good sciatic pain as well–both sides.
This happens every time I end up more sedentary for a little while, but it seems to be progressive/degenerative.
If I stop working physically, then everything hurts. And each time I stop, it gets worse.
The part of me that looks forward with fear is afraid of what life will be like when I can’t be out moving and working all the time. There are already days where I just want to die to be free of the pain.
What will that look like 20, 30, 40 years from now with additional decades of wear and tear on my body.
There’s a line in the end of the Book of Mormon I’m occasionally reminded of where the people were so miserable they wished to die but continued fighting to stay alive.
I am getting to know that feeling.
My body already is injured in so many ways. Both thumbs have apparently have torn ligaments, such that i can’t squeeze without pain in certain positions. And either I’ve got arthritis or more soft tissue injury in at least two other fingers.
My memory is shot, too. I’m… losing it. Feels like early onset Alzheimer’s. It started out as a daily fog. I knew I had a few hours each day of crisp, effective, sharp abstract thinking, before I was done and had to do less brain-intensive things. That started 10-15ish years ago.
Then I started not being able to find the words to communicate what I was thinking.
I’m forgetting recent events. My shorter term memory is getting really bad. In a conversation with my mother before going to bed, A kept saying 2013 and 2014 instead of 2023 and 2024. And A piece of equipment that I have that I allowed my mom to lend to one of her friends… I could have sworn she asked me about that like a month ago. Apparently, it’s been like a year and a half? I have a vague memory of the conversation, but to me it was maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago. Maybe a month.
Stuff like that.
I’m struggling.
All the way around.
I should probably go get MRIs again on my spine, top to bottom to see how badly things have progressed since my twenties when they already told me I had bulged discs and osteoarthritis. I wonder where things are at now.
I probably need to Get an x-ray of my elbow, as that slip and fall on the ice from last December, when I hit my elbow super hard, I can still feel the little pieces inside my elbow, and I still can’t lean on that elbow reliably without some pretty good pain. It’s been 6 months ish.
And I should probably get mris on my thumbs and an x-ray of my fingers…
Ugh.
I guess I should be grateful we’ve got technology to be able to image internal issues. It’s pretty amazing, honestly.
Watching lots of Star Trek has me wishing our technology were a little more advanced, though. 😆
I spent the day in my room, again, working on paperwork. Today was going through the piles and piles of receipts and what not from both 2023 and 2024.
I did make really good progress, so good.
All of the many piles have now been reduced to one pile for each year and are now in little labeled bins of their own.
That’s progress on two fronts: progress on cleaning and organizing my room, and progress on getting tax stuff done.
🎉
We move out officially next Saturday.
Fun fun fun.
Lots to do between now and then.
I’m going to try and finish packing up my room tomorrow (Sunday). I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth right now to handle it. Lots of offers from family. But I don’t have the bandwidth to handle any of it right now.
Not quite the nicest time of year to be living in my car. 😅
We’re just now embarking on the lovely steaming summer. Joy. Realistically, I’m gonna take off for a good long time, though, I’d guess.
I might not be able to do much about my body, but hopefully my brain is fixable.
Although, the more time goes by, the less it seems reasonable to hope for.
There’s that whole god thing in the background. I know I’m happier when I choose to follow what I still mostly believe.
It’s just that it’s almost a form of PTSD? There’s so much fear and pain. It gets reinforced over and over again every time I try again. Yes, I’m happier when I believe. I dare say I’m actually happy. And I can’t afford to hope. It hurts too much. What I hope for never comes. What god promised… did I ruin it? Did he lie? Is it still yet to come?
If I want to get past the pain with the god stuff, I have to change what I hope for, but in doing so, I lose nearly everything and start over.
At least, that’s how it feels.
It’s so… huge.
…
One more week here. Then… on to somewhere else.
There’s no excitement. No adventure. No interest. No motivation. I’m just tired, overwhelmed, and just… done.
It’s like… what’s the point… of any of it? What I hope for for my own life never comes to pass, and my desires to help the world… we’re bent on destroying ourselves and each other. So much anger and hatred and blame.
Right now it feels like trying to dam the rushing waters of a failed Hoover Dam with a single brick.
It’s… different… to have arrived at a point where I can no longer even manufacture motivation. I think that’s because I don’t see hope of success, pretty much anywhere. So, as the saying I goes, I don’t really live: I simply exist.
I need to believe in the starfish-on-the-beach story.
But I’m so tired.
So so tired.
Life tired.
~ stephen
Lift the World 