All the king's horses and all the king's men...

I've been experiencing much more pain in my leg. During our trip I tried my best to ignore the pain - I was in Europe, after all!! But there were those days (okay, 4) that I spent mostly in bed. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe - hell, it hurt!!

Since I've been back, I've played possum again with my friends. I can't fake it for very long, the girlies know me too well. I'm good for about 3-4 hours before I'm not able to move without either making my lovely grunting noises or tapping my foot so hard against the ground that my entire wheelchair shakes. When Missy K. was here there were several times I wheeled straight to bed because I needed a break.

When my leg hurts this bad, it's impossible to ignore it. It's hard to sleep and function normally. If I'm lucky to fall asleep, the leg pain will wake me up and finding a comfortable position to sleep again is not easy. The past two weeks have become a marathon of twenty hour days.

One of the unfortunate side effects lack of sleep spits out is emotional rawness. I have been skewered with pain. I cry when I'm alone - this is not hormonal, believe me. I hurt from the tightness in my scalp to the numbness in my toes. My emotional innards have been twisted, wrung out and stretched. I don't feel hopeless, just tired and empty. Not depressed, just flat and colorless.

Sleeping pills don't work. Painkillers don't work. I'm not wallowing in self-pity, either. This is yet another chapter in my recovery that is thicker than those in the past. I know I will push through but right now, I feel broken.

Spring bungee cord

I started writing this post in March and forgot to hit "publish". There seems to be a pattern to my ever increasing funk. Hmmm....need to think about this turn of events....

Spring is here, can you believe it? Air is fresh and clean, the flowers are blooming, wind gently caresses my hair...sigh...bah humbug.

Don't get me wrong. I am always in awe of Mother Nature. I'm simply not feeling it - you know, the "spring" in my step, the "woo hoo" to my brain. I'm kinda in a funk. I've so much more to do in my house and yet I'm perfectly content to let the boxes pile up. As long as I can scoot around 'em, I don't care. It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just that I'm not happy. I'm in the 'tweens of happy and disgruntled.

For the first time since this all happened to me, I'm starting to really feel cheated. I mean, I'm grateful to be alive. Given the way things could have gone, it was very possible I might have been a shell of me, lying in a bed. I'm grateful that I can do things I never thought I could do again - yet there's still a gnawing feeling in my gut. It's that want for things I won't be able to have again. I've had these feelings before but they've been more of an annoyance (think mosquito-like); now it's as if a swarm of bees are constantly doing their buzz buzzing in my brain Believe me, that's the last thing I need twirling around in my head right now. My thoughts, if brought to life, would be pretty close to that scene in Poltergeist, when they open the door to the kid's room and all the toys are swirling about in some crazy, dancing out of control merry-go-round. That's dangerous in my head because I definitely somebody to be in charge of crowd control...or else stuff starts spilling out of me. I already have an edit button problem, I don't need the sewer from my brain to open up and spew things out of my mouth. Nobody wants that, believe me.

While I was visiting in the Philippines, I started saying things (for the life of me I can't recall a single comment, you'll have to take my word for it) that were not very kind. More sarcastic. Definitely not complimentary to some people and most certainly not to the general Philippine population closest to me. My cousins, not having been exposed to such behaviour from me, took my comments to be "cute" and "silly" and "funny". Riiiiiight. Because that's what I am folks. Cute and silly and funny. I. AM. NOT. ANY. OF. THOSE. THINGS. I can "be" cute or "be" silly, or even "be" funny but I it would be an untruth to say that those qualities lie deep within my soul. I'm a bitch. But because I say things with a smile, people think it's cute. Or if I giggle, I'm being silly. Better yet, if I shrug my shoulders, smile and giggle all at once, I'm FUNNY. Most people like it packaged and ready to assimilate. Cover equals book - judgement successful.

Anyway, back to my original grouse - I'm discombobulated. While the pendulum is swinging up in my life, I still feel the tug back down to zero. I need to figure out what's pulling me down when there's so much to enjoy. Is it possible that all those feelings of helplessness and rage that I've mercilessly squashed down in order to survive are springing back up? Uh oh.