Circling the Drain

 Lately I've begun to feel like I am circling the drain.  The end has always loomed over me large the last 22 years but more and more I get this awful sense that my time is nigh.  I hate it. I'm not ready.  I have more to do, and I need to be here for my kids.  But I'm in so much pain every day. It's becoming harder to function. All my creativity is sapped. I feel like i have no more stories to tell. My can't play my guitar. There's only pain.  My body is wracked with it. Chronic pain is consuming and it's biting the last bits off now.  I only feel semi normal when I take pain medication, and I don't like to do that.  It's becoming almost untenable.  I hope I can fight through this and pull myself up again, but... I dunno.  It's been a long fight. I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm alone. It's hard. Writing these words out makes me feel better because at least I'm acknowledging these thoughts so I can deal with it.  My back hurts.  My feet hurt. My knees hurt. My neck hurts. My arms hurt. My fingers lose more feeling everyday - no normal sensations, only pain. 

June comes around again

 It’s the middle of the night and it’s a warm night, not a hot one, but still, I have not yet fallen asleep and it’s almost 2 in the morning. It’s this time of night my mind seems to run wild - Sometimes it feels as if my mind is free at this time. Free from the restraints that my failing body keeps it caged during the day. In my youth, I always used to think of this time as my most creative. I did a lot of my creating at this time - be it writing stories or essays or composing music, This time of night has always seemed to feed into the river of creativity. 

I’m not really feeling creative right now and I haven’t been feeling creative for a long time. I haven’t written anything that I have been in love with in a long time. It has become difficult and almost impossible to play guitar very much; The neuropathy in my left hand has rendered it almost completely useless. I played a little guitar up at camp this last weekend and I got to a point where I could barely form an E major chord. Betrayed by my own body. I’m thinking that it has to do with some pinched nerves in my neck and spine from all the spine issues I have. I’m still holding out hope that I can get that taken care of and that maybe I can at least get that part of my life back. Sometimes I feel like I’m whittling down to nothing. Like maybe I am going in to my back nine of life. Maybe this is my ramp out. And I get to slowly lose everything that I used to love about life. It’s not a comforting thought, and I can’t succumb to that. I have to think that if I fight, And I work towards it I can regain some of these things. But the fight has gotten so much harder, and it is hard not to become overwhelmed by a sense of despair. But I’m trying real hard not to. At least I had the good sense to type this out right now - I feel like this is one of the first big spots of writing I have done in a while. 

My body seems to fail more and more every day. I’m tired. I’m hurting all the time. And I don’t like to admit it, but I’m very lonely. I’m so lucky I have my children in my life because I don’t know if my heart would be in it if they weren’t around. They are a very big beacon of light and they are definitely what keeps me going. I know people say this kind of thing all the time, and in my case, it’s absolutely true. They are what keeps the blood pumping through my heart. I hope I can find some joy in life again outside of that too, though because that’s important. I would like to be a well-rounded human being And I have to remember to keep trying to do things that I love and things that make me feel alive.