No one can judge another person's pain or decide what amount of pain can be endured. I read about Palestinian women who, after having a limb torn off by a bomb during the Invasion, kept walking, searching for a lost child, actually refusing any medical attention. Here I am, with all my limbs, albeit only 30% of the original bone, and I am finding the pain completely unendurable.
One reads about people who pass out from pain... In 'Gone with the Wind', when Scarlett and Rhett take Melanie and her baby on the road from Atlanta and Scarlett asks about Melanie, she is told that she passed out from the pain.
I only have been experiencing this recently myself. I actually have moments when the pain beomes so severe that I lose consciousness briefly. It is terrifying. I don't want this reality. It is beyond my control completely... not a question of whether or not to take medication at this point even, but whether it is safe for me to stand, to walk across the floor even with a walker. In the middle of the night, I sit on the edge of my bed and the tears flow silently down my cheeks. As Theoden asked in the 'Two Towers', 'How did it come to this?'
I know there are plenty of individuals whose situations are far worse than mine. There are people who are dying... but then, is dying worse than THIS life? For many, many years, since becoming disabled in fact, I have perceived death as a release, as the promise of Peace at the end of a long struggle. I do not want to die, but I don't want a life that is no life either.
So, three weeks to go before the first operation, if I only can survive it. Each day when I take care of my cats, I promise them that I will not surrender to despair, that I will come through to the other side of this dark tunnel. They need me and for that, I take those excruciatingly painful steps down the stair every day, although I admit my patience when Cupid attempts to eat yet another plastic bag is not what it once was.
There are those who think of my Cats as an ordeal I shouldn't suffer, as something that makes my life more difficult now, but in fact, I don't know how I would survive this without them. It is their love and their need for me that keeps me going, day by day, that makes me determined not to surrender. The loneliness of my current existence would be unendurable with them. I have no social life at this point and no affection apart from theirs. I never expected this sort of life, never expected a situation this alienated from human affection.
I have discovered that many people are afraid of disability and of pain. They retreat from it for whatever reason. It is not even that it is boring or tedious, which it is. It terrifies them, so they avert their gaze and choose to ignore it. Love is not always positive. I have learned that people can love you and that can make them crueler than they would be if they felt indifference or dislike. Love can be the most positive influence in a person's life but the wrong kind of love can be utterly destructive.
One reads about people who pass out from pain... In 'Gone with the Wind', when Scarlett and Rhett take Melanie and her baby on the road from Atlanta and Scarlett asks about Melanie, she is told that she passed out from the pain.
I only have been experiencing this recently myself. I actually have moments when the pain beomes so severe that I lose consciousness briefly. It is terrifying. I don't want this reality. It is beyond my control completely... not a question of whether or not to take medication at this point even, but whether it is safe for me to stand, to walk across the floor even with a walker. In the middle of the night, I sit on the edge of my bed and the tears flow silently down my cheeks. As Theoden asked in the 'Two Towers', 'How did it come to this?'
I know there are plenty of individuals whose situations are far worse than mine. There are people who are dying... but then, is dying worse than THIS life? For many, many years, since becoming disabled in fact, I have perceived death as a release, as the promise of Peace at the end of a long struggle. I do not want to die, but I don't want a life that is no life either.
So, three weeks to go before the first operation, if I only can survive it. Each day when I take care of my cats, I promise them that I will not surrender to despair, that I will come through to the other side of this dark tunnel. They need me and for that, I take those excruciatingly painful steps down the stair every day, although I admit my patience when Cupid attempts to eat yet another plastic bag is not what it once was.
There are those who think of my Cats as an ordeal I shouldn't suffer, as something that makes my life more difficult now, but in fact, I don't know how I would survive this without them. It is their love and their need for me that keeps me going, day by day, that makes me determined not to surrender. The loneliness of my current existence would be unendurable with them. I have no social life at this point and no affection apart from theirs. I never expected this sort of life, never expected a situation this alienated from human affection.
I have discovered that many people are afraid of disability and of pain. They retreat from it for whatever reason. It is not even that it is boring or tedious, which it is. It terrifies them, so they avert their gaze and choose to ignore it. Love is not always positive. I have learned that people can love you and that can make them crueler than they would be if they felt indifference or dislike. Love can be the most positive influence in a person's life but the wrong kind of love can be utterly destructive.
