Aged by the invisible

My day started just in the way I expected with a snipe from Adam, as I said he read yesterdays post once I had gone to bed and wasn’t happy I hadn’t told him at the time, I asked him what he would have done and he shut up after one word, “well…”. In other words my actions were 100% correct, all that would have been achieved would have him being worrying and insisting I went to hospital to be checked. I know that he doesn’t like not being told what is happening, not just when it comes to me, but also with his extended family, but every conversation regarding others health have ended in the same way, with him looking angry, but admitting he couldn’t have done anything but he just wants to know. We all seem to have a desire to protect him from these situations, I suppose because we all know he is a worrier, and a worrier who has the instant instinct to presume it is the worst case scenario. A sulky reaction after the fact is easier to handle.

I slept well last night, but I seem to be in one of my sleepy days, I could happily curl up and disappear into sleep, with little thought or consideration for where I am. I remember days like this when I was at school where you would prop you head up with your hand, so it looked as though you were reading something or thinking, then slipping into a light sleep as you had no other choice. Only to be woken if you were lucky by a friend trying to keep you out of trouble, or the teacher. I have noticed in the last few years that I have had a lot of what I would call child like reactions to situations, almost as though I have digressed. I don’t remember every falling asleep when I was working, regardless of the lack of sleep or anything else, but here I am again as an adult doing what I did as a child. Wanting to sleep where I am, sleeping a full 12 hours per night and taking afternoon naps. I know my emotions are often childish, as I cry at anything almost as a defense at times, but that is the lesion damage. But crying because something isn’t the way I want, childish, add in many of the symptoms I have and I get more child like by the second. I suppose a lot of illnesses do this but seeing it happen to yourself is odd, others well that is just the way it is, but yourself, is puzzling.

I think that is often the worst thing about being ill, you are forced to see yourself changing. Dealing with pain and so on is just something you do, but seeing yourself slowly changing into a combination of appearances and actions that you have seen in others and pitied or internally labeled as crippled, is really odd. When I see myself doing something as simple as walking, I am slow, unsteady and at stiff legged, grabbing on to doors, sliding my hand across the wall, well that is the way the really elderly move, not me, but yes that is now me. Every physical change is yet another label I gave to others and now have to wear. Looking in a mirror I now see an aged face, with clear signs of the pain and illness that I have to live with, it is no longer an invisible illness, as it is taking it’s toll. I don’t know which is worse, all those years when no one would believe me that anything was wrong, as I look fine, or now realizing that my entire body shows, to even a stranger that I am now disabled and I am daily looking and getting worse. It is bad enough getting my head round the normal stages of aging, the lines, the grey hairs, but add into that all the rest, well it is often more painful, than the spasms and nerve pains. I don’t feel as though I am about to turn 52, in my head I’m still 25 or maybe 30, not unusual there, but it is my body that lets that all down, I now look in my movements and actions, as though I am nearer 80 than any other age. The dream I once had of aging disgracefully has long gone, as I have aged before I even had that chance.

So here I am on one hand a child again, not in control of my body in anyway, yet I appear as an aged cripple. Two ends of the same story but both hard to handle when it is the same person, worse still it is me, that is hard to understand.