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Saturday, August 26, 2000
18:44 
Chorizo moment : Some time back I was standing in the Office in The Bear, having had a few sips of my gin, when I got this sudden craving for chorizo and I could smell it and taste it. It didn't go very well with my gin. I looked at everyone, wrinkled my nose, and said "Chorizo. That's Andy's fault." I knew, just knew, there was no doubt. I fired off an SMS message and about 30 seconds later the phone rang. It was Andy, spluttering and flustering with a nearly-ready pizza in front of him and some chorizo sausage in his hand. I had to laugh. There was never any doubt in my mind what was going on, from the moment I tasted it to the moment he phoned. Sometimes it gets me like that; I know things, and there isn't any doubt, even though I couldn't possibly know. Most of the time there is a hefty dose of doubt attached to these things.
Now, when we have one of these completely inexplicable but undeniable non-consensus events, we call it a chorizo moment. It doesn't just refer to the twin stuff, but it has special connotations in that direction for me. The sense of some profound bond is so very strong at those times, it washes away, even for a brief time, all the doubts and the bitterness and sadness that we are non-consensus twins, never to be seen as having that almost cellular bond by anyone in the world except us.
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18:43
Oooh. Look .Blogger has gone and got itself a favicon. Wonder if they had as much trouble getting their to work as I did getting mine to? Bet they don't have to have it in the header files. Maybe it's time to look at SSI after all.
It's odd today. The Weapon seems to think it has parsed the saline gel. I'm not so sure, but if it keeps it quiet and it's no longer running around like a badger with an itch, then I don't care. Of course this means it's free to start tormenting me again, but we all have our crosses to bear. Even pagans, now that it's a figure of speech.
Feel distinctly odd. That sense of potential has faded to a background urging though, the way a smell or a sound can be filtered by the brain so that it's no longer so obvious. I'm up and down all over the place. One minute I think I can get through this whole daunting mess, at other times I just burst into tears because it seems impossible. I'm stiff and sore today, which isn't helping, and the weather is my favourite walking weather; cool, damp, atmospheric. Should be out somewhere.
The twins story is upsetting me as well, it's not just Andy. I browsed through the various links and stopped dead when I saw this picture. Look at them holding one another, bound by flesh as well as spirit and birth. The heartache there is so profound, how could any parent stand being faced with a decision like that?
One of them, "Mary" is weak, cannot survive alone. The other one, "Jodie", is strong and healthy, is the one with the functioning organs. I think that Mary is what is classed as a "parasitic" twin, and that label says it all. Parasite. Not a person, a thing. Abomination. Cut it off. 14 days old now. Born on the 8th of August. Not old enough to express their feelings, not old enough to understand.
I think back to the memories, or whatever they are, and I imagine...
Don't let me drag you with me, please let me go, I don't want you to die.
But we are one. Sisters, twins, one being. How can I live without you?
You can. You'll see. You must. If you live, I will live with you.
But these are the thoughts of an adult trying to understand what it would be like. The words of an adult with experience of the bond, no matter how unreal that bond may seem to others. I can remember being separated, even if, in this world, it never happened. I can remember being two-as-one, becoming two-as-two, remember the shock, the pain, the fear, the sudden sense of inconsolable loss that was to be echoed 13 years of non-consensus childhood later. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
We are both strong and weak, compared to one another, my brother and I. Mirror image twins, perhaps. Male/female, left handed/right handed. We have the same cracked tooth on opposite sides. Two sides of the same whole. Gods.
Read the section on "evil twins":
| "...the love and bond between the two twins survives--even in unfortunate cases of where one twin kills the other" |
Can you imagine?
After recent events, this all strikes too close to the heart. I feel for those girls, and their parents. Can they really be separated? Even if one is cut off, dies, will the other ever really be apart from her, in her heart? Will she survive? Would the shock prove too great? Andy and I share too many things, even at a distance, for me to think that she would not be aware at some level that her sister was no longer in this world, that there would never be that moment of clutching fingers to quell the agony of being apart. Of having space between.
Never to have a chorizo moment.
I hadn't realised that Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese twins, were only joined by a 5 inch ligament.They stayed bonded, stayed together, married, had 22 children, between them. They lived to the ripe old age of 63, and died within a few hours of one another. I remember reading about them as a child, when I went through a phase of being fascinated by twins, sure that I should have had one, and voraciously absorbed all the information I could about twins. Only identical twins, but especially Chang and Eng. In the account I recall, it said that Chang died of a heart attack, and when he awoke some hours later and found his brother dead beside him, Eng cried out and died also.
All the accounts say that the medical technology was insufficient to separate them - but the ligament was 5 inches long, three inches thick. They could amputate limbs even then. Did they really want to be separated?
Oh gods. Oh gods, Andy, they were joined at the navel. They had a common navel.
And these little girls, Mary and Jodie, sharing a single set of heart and lungs. Jodie being, as the doctors put it "a life support system" for Mary. How much closer are they? How much more like one thing do they feel? Are they really too young for it to affect them?
But in the memories, I remember the shock. And we were newborn.
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Friday, August 25, 2000
19:59
Man, that aye-aye is just ultra cute.
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17:22
Well, that was horrible.
Other people, friends, say "We're doing such and such" and I get jealous.
Core wasn't the jealous type, although I was as a child. It has been very difficult getting to grips with it. Andy just accused me of sounding bitter and he's right. But you accuse someone of sounding bitter and it's like you are accusing them of attacking you, of resenting you. I hope he has a great time this weekend, I don't resent him for having the opportunity to go someplace. I do resent the situation I am in for preventing me from having the same opportunities. I resent my life for keeping me in this position. I resent this illness for keeping me confined, I resent Family for being mean to me without explanation. The only time I come to resent those I love is when they start complaining to me about some aspect of their lives that causes them problems when I have those same problems in shedloads. Not so much the weird shit, although the occasional "Help! Help! There's a (harmless) such and such in my living room and it's getting in the way of the TV, get rid of it, I don't like it!" is almost guaranteed to get me fuming. I mean more the everyday stuff, the mundane (both the boring mundane and the important, beautiful mundane). Job worries ("at least you've got a fucking job, are earning money, are working in a field where the job market never seems to be saturated"), health worries ("aww, has diddums got a sore throat?"), that sort of thing.
I don't have a lot of patience or time for those who can't appreciate what they've got.
Sorry? Hypocrite? You think I don't appreciate what I've got, think I can't see that there are people worse off than me?
I wouldn't complain about back pain to someone with fused vertebrae. I wouldn't complain about my living conditions to someone who is homeless. I wouldn't complain about my work to someone being paid 50p an hour, 16 hours a day, to put trainers together in some 3rd World slave labour camp.
That doesn't mean I can't have dreams of things that could be fulfilled one day, and my dreams are only little ones. I dream about having things that many people in this world take for granted, and I can assure you that there is very little in my life I take for granted.
I fantasise about trained aye-ayes and black helicopters, but dreams and fantasy are not the same thing. More people should remember that.
The depression hit me hard about half an hour ago, and it will slide into despair so easily. Alone again this weekend. And I miss him too, won't be able to talk to him now til Tuesday.
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14:01
Last night's dream involved the sea. It involved all sorts of things, but the bit I remember clearly is running barefoot across large-grained sand, with drifts of small stones and pebbles lying on top of it, like the mineralised carcasses of beached whales. It was Work, again, I'm sure of it. I can recall the sense of purpose too clearly for it to have been anything else. I'll continue to keep picking at the tendrils of fragment echoes that remain of the rest of it.
It's a funny thing, trying to unravel dream fragments.
For instance, I know that there was a cottage involved, and I think that the cottage had an open wooden staircase sort of like the one at Frood's parents' house. The wood was dark, but it wasn't in the same place in the house as the one Frood's parents have. I think that the cottage stood raised up slightly from the side of a single track road a bit like the ones in Hereford, with trees that had dark green leaves forming a damp, lush-smelling canopy over the metalled surface. However I know that if this is correct then it stood on the slightly higher side of the road facing towards the sea. I also know that there were other people involved, and that one of them was male and I spent considerable time talking to him. I can smell the scent of the beach very clearly, but I can only get the vaguest of hints of the emotional context of the dream, of the Work itself.
Emotional context - the feelings produced by the Work. Was it one group against another? Was there conflict? Was it an arbitration? Was it good Work or unpalatable but necessary? Were we in charge or were we the underdogs? Did we know we would succeed or was it a chance in a million?
Sometimes I wake up and the dream is there in all its technicolour glory, like the one with the crop circles and the one with the mutants. Sometimes I wake up and I can taste small echoes of the emotional context and nothing else. Sometimes I can wake up with one section very clear and the rest just out of reach. Sometimes I don't remember it at all and then flashes of the context come back to me, or I will have a tendril whisked past my nose at a speed too high for me to grasp it. Sometimes it has been so completely blanked out I wonder if maybe I just shut down or the world skipped through a couple of hours.
I think it is most infuriating when I can remember one bit clearly and the rest hardly at all. Especially as I have a tendency to revisit places in my dreams, and can sometimes forget a recent dream but have bits replaced by fragments of a previously forgotten dream.
And how am I today? Fragile, emotionally. Carefully blancing on a fine line between having the intestinal fortitude and aggressive attitude necessary to tackle this heap of shit, and finding it all too much and the world too hard to deal with.
For instance. Andy says he's going camping this weekend with Tam, and that is enough to tip me over the edge from coping to non, at least for a while. Why? Because I want to go too. I want Frood to take me to Dartmoor, to come walking with me. I want to get out of this house in which I have been trapped for a week and spend time with my husband. Time that doesn't include lying whimpering on the sofa while he sits to one side and worries about how to help me. However he's working on Saturday, and I'm probably working on Monday. So we can't. But that leaves me at a loose end on Saturday, and we have domestic chores to attend to on Sunday (and he'll be ever so tired as it was stock count week this week) which mean we won't really be able to do anything then either.
And even if this were not so, I'm still ill. My coccyx is flaring badly today, I have an incredibly dodgy tummy and I'm still very weak. Weak enough to think that I can't even cycle into town to get Percival fixed.
Life's not fair, Princess, but sometimes it gets to me. It gets to me that I give so much, give so much of myself, usually without question, but there seem to be no rewards for it. When do I get to settle down, have the dog, the cat, the ferret, the fireplace, the aga, the weekends of walking, the friends round for meals, the Hallowe'en parties, the black helicopter and trained aye-aye [1] ? How much do I have to do to deserve even a small chunk of my happiness dreams? How much do I have to do even to deserve a place to live that we can call our own?
Finish the PhD, girlie, that's what. Break out of this box, climb out of the hole. Take some painkillers and get on with it.
Well, I mailed my supervisors yesterday. Hopefully some sort of dialogue will start and this won't seem such a terrifying prospect. I don't want to ask for a further extension. I want to get it over and done with. I've even started looking at online recruitment companies specialising in environmental positions, and I'm going to rehash my CV and send it out to some of them explaining that I'm in the final year of my PhD, what can they reccommend.
I need a training partner who looks like Wolverine.
 [1] My fantasy job is mercenary scum for an environmental consultancy. This would involve wearing tight black trousers and abseiling from a black helicopter into exotic, foreign, nasty polluting power plants or chemical plants or mining concerns, waving a large gun around and yelling "Shut it down!" I would have a trained aye-aye (see right) who could pick locks with that amazing finger, but who was also an expert in electronics and cryptography. I would also have a world of knowledge about process technology and environmental law (and I'm nearly there on that already). Big fat businessmen who don't care about the world in which we live would turn pale and quiver at the sound of my name. Sort of James Bond meets Friends of the Earth or something.
I know, it's not going to happen, but it's a fantasy, right? Environmental consultant is my ideal job. The rest of it is just silly, but fun.
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12:58
More dreams last night.
Did I tell you about the one I had last week sometime, which had my Auntie Hilary in it? I didn't blog it, did I?
That one involved me meeting up with my Auntie Hilary (a fine woman, who was still strikingly handsome in a supermodel sort of way at the age of 60) in the car park at the bottom of Maiden Castle. She had a big volvo estate and two black labs. My Auntie Hilary had a black cat called Zelda when I was about 6, but nothing since, and she has never had a driving license. Anyway, we met up, just in front of the big board that has all the information on it, and the two dogs were trotting around the way well-trained but fairly independent working dogs do. The boot to the volvo was open, and she was sitting on the tailgate. Inside she had one of those tartan blankets that people have in their cars, and a box with food and stuff in it. There were dog hairs all over the place and one of those grid things made of elongated ellipsoid metal struts above the back seat to keep the dogs in the boot. The car was a sort of dark blue or maroon, and the interior upholstery was dark blue. There was straw in there.
Auntie Hilary asked me if I wanted some meusli and brought out this box of stuff. She poured some and added some water to it and it started turning into this weird paste, sort of the consistency of polenta. It was called "Mueslolan" and it was designed to clean your teeth as you ate it, so that you could finish your breakfast having had a good dose of daily fibre and with clean teeth. It tasted horrid, like All Bran mixed with liquidised soggy cardboard, and smelled of Shreddies. Could catch on, I reckon. Maybe I should patent it.
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Thursday, August 24, 2000
22:29
The white hairs are multiplying. Andy found some new ones the other night. I started getting them when I got ill. Maybe I'll be white all over by the time this is finished.
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22:23
Oh hell. Got totally distracted by a sudden urge to tidy the conservatory and now I've lost my place. I'm pretty sure I was rambling anyway.
I've been spending a lot of time today thinking about how to get out of this hole. The Weapon has flipped, got totally freaked by an inability to parse the mechanism and structure of a makeshift supersaturated saline gel we were using for ease of connection over Monday and Tuesday. It has been annoying the hell out of me. Can you tell? It's like having a mad dog stuck in your head. Not a dangerously mad dog, not really, just annoyingly mad. I'm stuck inside this box with it, still, and instead of being soft and smug and dangerously seductive it's running around pulling its hair out and looking flustered. I keep thinking I should be enjoying its distress but I'm not. I don't like it at all.
When I was Core, I knew exactly what I was, exactly what my purpose was, exactly where I stood in the world, my role, my position, my nature, my being. The world was easy, like a bar code. There were absolutes and not much else, and time was reduced to no more than a 3 week window. Anything outside of that was unreal, too abstract to contemplate. Some days I could see no further than the next morning. I lived in the moment and it worked for me.
Then Key gave up and Core died and I was left hanging on. And I got sick. Very sick. I expected to get ill, I didn't expect it to be like this. I think I lost something somewhere. I think the whole thing about carrying on as a useful item is rather tricky, they haven't got it quite right. I either lost something, or Core didn't die properly. Core didn't leave me the way it was supposed to. The Weapon evolved from what was Core, is the manifestation of the part of me that was Core, but it's not supposed to be Core, any more than I am. I will always be a core, but that should be merely a pattern description, not a purpose, not a role, not a mode of thinking.
I think I either something in the transition, lost some part of myself, either when I became Core, but then it didn't matter because Core replaced it, or when Core died. Or perhaps something didn't die properly when Core did. Maybe I am haunted.
And Family doesn't talk to me any more, although they talk to the Weapon. Having said that, I'm sure I remember dreaming a few nights ago and speaking to Father. I was standing at the bottom of a hill and he was perched on a fence post, talking to me. I wish I could remember what he said.
I'm still in this box but the quality of it has changed. I can sense a brittleness to it that depends on some sort of trigger. If I can find the trigger it would almost be like striking the box from the one direction in which it is vulnerable and it would shatter around me. I can feel it, tight the way my shoulders are tight. It almost feels like my body is cramping because I am confined in a box, a coccoon of some kind and I need to stretch, break it, fragment the walls and expand into whatever it is I am supposed to be, like a dragonfly emerging from the larval shell.
I don't know what that trigger is.
I contemplate striking out alone into a wild place, going walkabout until I find this trigger, or something comes to me that will tell me what it is. Or maybe the walkabout is the trigger itself, forcing myself to be independant in what would be a fairly risky situation for me, ill as I am. The prospect frightens me. It shouldn't - plenty of people go hiking alone. But empaths don't do very well in isolation, and isolation has been at the heart of my problems recently.
What could the trigger be? I feel as if Family are waiting for me to get out of this box, that they won't reassert their relationship with me until I prove myself by becoming this thing, whatever it is, that I am supposed to become. I am more than what I find myself being at the moment, trapped in one form, in this cage. There is a shape, around me, that I am supposed to fill, a space that is waiting for me to occupy it, if I could only discover what it is I need to do to break this confinement and unfurl.
Unfurl, breathe. Shift, transform.
Hugin and Munin watch me with bright, attentive eyes and preen occasionally.
It's a sensation of potential, but it's more than that, because this is a potential that is already there, in existence. The dragonfly inside the spent larval casing already has its new shape, it merely needs to break free to occupy that space. That is what this feels like.
In other news we have been experimenting with using salt water and saline gel (ok, a mix of ky and sea salt so far) to improve the connection. it makes a huge difference. It could take us anything up to 2 hours to hit a decent connection before, if we managed it at all. This is immediate, direct, increases the size of the target area, although it still works best when it is dead on the spot. The Weapon hates it.
Actually, I have to say that I don't like the fact that the slipperiness means that the physical connection isn't so stable, and it does leave a nasty gunky mess. We've ordered in some proprietary saline gel and will be experimenting with that, as well as, hopefully, some gelled sea water to see if it is pure conductivity or whether the sea has some influence. So far the gelatine mixes haven't turned out very well, but we were using a lot of salt. However, the fact that it cushions the connection structures so that they don't become inflamed, and improves the resolution of the connection so greatly just about outweighs the more unpleasant attributes.
Mind you, it does feel absurd.
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13:54
A lot is a minor understatement.
A lot has still to be done.
But, fuck it, I'm not going to let this thing beat me. Not today. I might hurt so much that I can't see properly, I might have a swelling in the side of my face that you can almost see, its so big. But not today.
I mean, let's look at this. I have a number of "issues" to deal with, which combine to produce this mountain of stress that is just too much for me at times.
For one, I'm ill. I'm ill with something that produces extreme physical pain and emotional stress. It has some very disturbing and distressing symptoms. For someone who is used to having an excellent memory and a sharply honed mind, the sort of mental difficulties produced by this illness are extremely upsetting. It is also extremely upsetting to have to deal with medical people who are not always sympathetic, and with my expectations of these medical personnel which lead me to either avoid them like the plague or be terribly disappointed and frustrated. Of course, given that my life isn't exactly your standard set of experiences, I'm also very worried, always, about how the medical establishment would view my mental state.
For two, I have a PhD to complete. I have to complete this PhD in order to get my life back on track, for Frood and I to be able to settle down, for me to be able to get the sort of job I want (although I doubt I'll get my fantasy job - a mercenary for an environmental consultancy), for all sorts of reasons. Not least of which is that I want a PhD, always have. The PhD is a very daunting thing for me right now, because I'm faced with completing it in 6 months when there really hasn't been enough work done on it for all sorts of reasons. Also, I get very nervous and panicky when I think about returning to Silsoe, because a lot of bad things happened to me there and the whole thing has become a great big mess in my head.
For three, there's the whole business with the Weapon, and that really needs to be sorted out. And Family. I want to know what it is I'm supposed to be doing or have done for them to have abandoned me like this. I want to know why they'll sit there and direct the Weapon in a direct, hands on fashion when it's verbally fencing with Andy, but they won't talk to me any more. I want to know why my cousin gets people and things and deities and all sorts to help her through and I don't get as much as a soggy chocolate biscuit. I want to know what it is they want from me, I want to know what it is I have to do to get that resonance back.
If I can't have that, I want to know for sure whether they've done with me or not.
On top of all of this we have the ongoing problems of isolation and frustration caused by not having anyone nearby to talk to about the things that really matter to me, and by Frood working such long hours, and by the difficulty and expense of buying property in Oxford which has led to us being in rented accomodation for so long. I really want us to get a place of our own that I can make into a safe space where I can relax. I do have certain requirements for any such space, however, and they will be very hard to meet in our current situation.
So how do I deal with all of this without it grinding me under? When the pain gets bad, and it's quite bad today but not as bad as it has been, it is very difficult to see past that, to see any way to cope with anything, and when it gets very bad it's impossible to be aware of anything but the pain for hours at a time. Then you're left with knowing that there is no way to make it stop except that one way, and the fight becomes a battle for survival, a battle to stay alive. Not because the pain itself will kill you, but because if that is the only way to stop the pain, it starts seeming like a sensible option, and your mind will start justifying it in all sorts of ways.
Let me explain something. I don't particularly want to die. I'm not scared of death, no. It doesn't worry me. I've done the traditional death and rebirth thing several times over, and I've been close enough to have lost any fear about the actual dead bit. I worry about suffering, I worry about losing control over my body - I can't think of anything worse happening than being trapped in an unresponsive body, unable to communicate, in constant pain. That's the worst thing I can think of, and it's a possibiliity if you get your attempted suicide badly wrong, and it also seems a possibility when the pain and the muscle weakness gets bad. I don't want to end up blind, prematurely senile, trapped in a wheelchair or worse. Death is a preferable option to that, for me.
When I get suicidal, it's a quest for release, for an end to pain and emotional torment that has really got too much for me. It's not so much that my life is not worth living - although it is, in a way. It's more of a question of the quality of life. That much incessant pain means that life becomes more of a burden, a torture, than a gift. I don't feel like I'm completely worthless, like the world would be better off without me. I have never felt that the world would be better off without me.
I have felt worthless in the sense that I am used to having certain capabilities and the illness is intermittently destroying those capabilities, and feelings of worthlessness arise from that, as well as from the entire issue of being ignored by Family. It's not the same thing.
I sometimes think that doctors and the like would have me pegged as a typical manic depressive. At least the doctor I saw today agreed with me that depression can most certainly be attributable to long-term illness and chronic pain.
Hang on. Need to make tea, take some painkillers.
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Wednesday, August 23, 2000
23:09
Haven't had the head to do this. A lot....
A lot has happened. Some good, some bad. But I'm still alive. And almost relieved.
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Monday, August 21, 2000
12:01
I'm at the end of my ability to endure.
Day 6. Day 6 and I still can't breathe without the spasms in my ribs near to making me whimper. The whole of my lower back is on fire, burning. Ghostly children throw cotton balls soaked in acid in lieu of snowballs, and where they strike they burn, sun through a lens, and then the skin itches for hours. My shoulders have petrified, and they were like wood before. My muscles quiver and tremble, ache and groan, when I attempt to put weight upon them.
I am still reduced to going up stairs on my hands and knees because I do not have the strength to make it up normally. My vision is blurred. I could not have driven in to work today even if the pain had not been this bad. The muscles in my sides above the pelvis hurt so much it is impossible to sit still, to lie still, and my neck is a near-rigid column of pain.
Today I consider going to the doctor because I cannot bear this any more and no one will help me. Today I think about going and then remember the hours I have spent in casualty, fighting tears and panic because of the pain, driven into hysterics when my blood spurted all over the walls and floor, only to be told they think I am suffering from a depressive illness. I remember the painful minutes spent with my previous doctor as he told me that all of this is a result of having only one eye and having been bullied at school. I remember sitting in my neurologist's office on one of the bad days, when I could barely think and was having trouble staying conscious, being asked questions I couldn't understand and certainly couldn't answer, while he picked at a stain on his trousers and decided I should see a psychologist.
I remember being classed as difficult and the walls shutting down "send her to the shrink" because I wouldn't take their proferred, unconsidered advice and settle down to a life of long term medication.
So if I go to the doctor today, what will he do?
No, Andy, diagnosis is not the same as pain management, but you see they don't like just to treat the pain at the doctor's surgery. They might do that when you drag me to casualty and we spend the night there, but they don't do that at your GP's. They like to decide what it is they are treating before they treat it, and you are kidding yourself if you think they are going to offer anything stronger than the cocodamol ibuprofen stack I occasionally almost poison myself with in an attempt to get relief. Oh no, what they will offer is a further course of antidepressants, prozac this time if the last appointment was anything to go by, and expect me to take them. 4 weeks for them to kick in, if my biochemistry will let them. I need my serotonin levels balanced, obviously.
This is the same GP who says, falsely, that unless my infllammatories are abnormal I can't have FMS.
So I suppose I could go. I could see what he has to say. And if it goes wrong, like it has before, if the despair comes in, what will I do then? I am so close to the edge now, so close to end, I think that would be the final nail in the coffin.
Not that I want nails in my coffin, understand. I don't really want a coffin at all, but I understand it is illegal not to have a casket of some description.
Interesting that you should mention the Kursk, you know. We have been following that story. I almost envy the people trapped down there. Their fate is at least predictable. And now known. The Kursk is totally flooded, so it might even have been quick. But I seem to recall that they were still hearing sounds from within on Wednesday, and I do wonder if maybe the crew decided to open the internal hatches in a final act of desperation to escape slow suffocation or radiation poisoning. So many people, so much money, just to find out if they could save even one person who would be a complete stranger.
Inside my systems are collapsing into one another. Behind my eyes, where the Weapon vies for vision, the boundaries have broken down and the systems have smeared, fingers dragged across an oil painting. My torso feels like a big bag of energetic soup. I don't know what's going on in there. I don't think anyone does. There is a pressure in my gullet, around the level of the clavicles, that makes swallowing painful, as if I am having to squeeze substance past some form of constriction. My feet are almost constantly wet and cold, like a dog's nose.
But they don't smell.
This is Day 6 of being confined to the house, having to fight to make it as far as upstairs. I can't cope with this any more. I can't. I can't do it. I belong outside in the air and the breeze and the rain and the storm. Even if I did make an appointment with the doctor, how the fuck would I get in to see him?
I'm almost tempted to pack my bag and walk, walk until the pain dissolves any sense of identity, or I collapse, and let things happen from there. More tempting is the idea to walk only as far as it would take me to get somewhere where I could meet the end without worrying about friends or family having to clear up the mess. Or finding the body. For some reason I think it would be terribly painful to find someone you love dead, although of course in dreams I have lost loved ones many times, held one of them in my arms as she slipped away regardless of all that I did to help her.
Maybe that's the difference. Maybe, having experienced the pain and guilt and fear and loathing of not having successfully saved someone, and worse, even if in non-consensus, I couldn't ever allow myself to neglect to do all that I could.
I don't know. It doesn't really matter. My situation is not the same as those of other people.
But I can't cope with this really, not any more. It is destroying my ability to love, as well as to trust. To survive, I have to become someone for whom the pain does not matter, is something that can be set aside. Not only do I need to deal with the pain itself, but if I do not find the strength to ignore it and get out of the house, simply being confined will drive me over the edge. I can't be someone capable of that and still be someone who can love, because the person who loves wants to scream at those who say they love her and demand to know why they do nothing.
I dreamed last night of making love to a woman, and that woman was me, but harder, stronger, the woman I work towards when I go to the gym (3 weeks now). She had two black eyes, perfect skin and longer hair than me. She probably had a black helicopter and a trained aye-aye as well, but that didn't come up in conversation. She was sinuous and lithe and attractive and mesmeric and I worry about what this means.
But not much, because I don't quite see how I can get through the rest of today, never mind the days following. I think I am dissolving, becoming absorbed by the mess inside me. I don't know what will come out, if anything will. Maybe whatever emerges will be something with the strength to do more than simply play games with the knife, maybe it will be something with enough strength to endure. I don't think it will be me who survives this.
The pain...
If you can imagine being pinned to a wall by someone shooting you with a nail gun, through the shoulders, in the dip below the distal end of the clavicle, through the wrists, just below the palm, through the sides, just below the rib cage, through the calves, pressing the flesh to one side and right through the middle, through the ankles, and through the feet, and then add to that the pain you get when you smash your elbow against something, but spread throughout all the long bones, and the sensation of having pulled every muscle in your body (as well as the acid pelting) then that is what this is like. But only some of it, for there is more than that. There is also the sensation of a long metal needle being inserted through the right temple and into the back of the eye I do not have, the agonised burning in my lower back and the feeling of someone standing on my sternum so that I cannot breathe properly and my heart thuds painfully. And this is just the pain. There is more. The vision loss, the dizziness, the intermittent nausea, the loss of memory, the loss of motor co-ordination.
Suddenly being confined to a wheelchair doesn't seem like such a ridiculous idea, or it wouldn't if I thought I'd make it far enough for that to happen.
And I don't know what to do. I am alone today and I don't know what to do.
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