March 19th 2010
unsent email from me
A letter I wont send. A letter the recipient will likely never see.
It’s a beautiful day. Seventy degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. The sort of day I wish I could appreciate, instead of hiding like a troll under a bridge from the garish light and child laughter.
I’ve not been sleeping.
Things aren’t going well.
I just don’t sleep anymore.
I’d grown adapted to my medications, started to crave and want and tense the hours before my next dose. I decided to try and quit. The first day or two, I’d just the constant nose running, sweating, and angry intestines. Seemed easy.
Then day three everything became horrific.
I started to feel myself curl into emptiness of my insides, twisting and turning like being stuffed into a nautilus shell, filled with sheet-thrashing, wall-punching chemical want. But even that was something I could deal with.
What is wrecking me is the pain. and the loneliness
Oh god, the pain in my back. My shoulder. My neck. My legs. Sobbing and twisting in bed. TENS unit, heating pad, assorted vibrating massagers, goosebump balls, all pressed against me, doing nothing. Like all the pain I’d avoided for months was coming back in one wrathful vengeful blow. I cried and wailed.
I almost called you.
I didn’t.
Instead, I piled my pillows next to me and wrapped my four limbs around them, pretending it was you. Wishing for nothing but that. Clutching you to me, making your chest damp with my tears.
Everything is going wrong. She’s taking away my insurance. I was going to use it for surgery on my hump that makes my right shoulder and arm always hurt, the veins in my legs that ache and make me hideous, and my right eye so I could maybe see sorta properly. Even without the one painkiller I’m purging, medications are over $100 a month WITH coverage, and I’ve no idea what I’m going to do. She’s decided that I’ve been dragging my feet with my medical issues, and I can’t seem to say or do anything to convince her otherwise. Why I’d do such a thing, aside from financial reasons or scheduling, I can’t imagine.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I… I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I can’t sleep anymore.
Every sort of weather makes me think of you. Each time of day, each change in the weather, it brings me inconsequential and non-specific memories of you and I.
Every day, I imagine that somehow it can all come back. I pretend that there’s some way that they’d let me have my old living quarters back, and you could visit, and we could be eating and driving and romping and picture taking and cupcake buying and boardwalk strolling.
I wish… I wish that’s what could be happening. Instead of this. Instead of this lonely terrible time. Instead of my days filled with pain and restlessness and doom and insomnia.
For the past few years, I’ve been plagued with the constant feeling that I’m running out of time. That feeling has mounted as time passes (which only makes sense). It’s growing. More and more. The more terrible things become, the more that feeling rises like a dark tide. And things do keep getting more frustratingly grim than before.
I wish…. I wish I were spending the seemingly short time I have with you. I wish my time was filled with the simple subtle joys of eating icecream in bed watching horror movies; of eating pancakes and sausage at dawn; of draping my body around yours in comfortable slumber; of silently drawing and computering side by side as we listen to scientists talk about the beauty and majesty of the tangible; all the while, feeling the silent battering ram of the intangible knocking me senseless, making me so simply and innocently happy and filled with glee.
I wish we had gone to museums together. I wish I’d had more NYC memories of you and I. Walking through the Met, appreciating true art together, and then walking through Central Park as dusk fell. Attending gallery openings together and schmoozing, giving each other looks of silent understanding through the entire superficial ordeal. Going to the Bronx Zoo, and being just as entertained at the kids’ reactions as the animals themselves. Going somewhere new, and making friends with strangers together.
I … still keep hoping that maybe you’d … write and explain some things. Kill off some of the brain demons that gnaw on my wonder. I keep hoping that you’d come find me and say you want me. Most selfish of all, I keep hoping maybe you’d be able to save me, though I know that’s impossible.
I’m drowning.
I miss you.