A constant battle goes on within myself these days. All at once I feel tired, frustrated, upset and angry because the disease is “grumbling,” (in the very technical terms of the doctor). And then I feel incredibly guilty for feeling that way, because what am I really doing with my life? I’m not helping people. I’m not writing the next “great Canadian novel.” I’m not really doing anything except feeling sorry for myself and then feeling guilty for not doing enough with this life that was given to me. Perhaps even given back to me when I was nineteen and the disease was at its worse.
Now, with my new bionic hip, I’m not really in pain anymore, and that means I can be more active, except I can’t, because I’m both tired and strung out at the same time. On beautiful days like today, even listening to Edith Piaf, planning my trip (T-21 days) to Paris, Ireland and London, I feel like I’m just not doing enough. But what is enough? And what should I be doing with my life? I’m hoping I’ll have some answers at the end of the summer.
It’s a hard birthday coming up. A milestone, to reach the same age your mother never made it past. My friend, Zesty, said that Madonna had a complete breakdown when she got to that birthday. I’m sort of headed in the same direction. I feel bad because I’m so lazy, rendered relatively incapable of a normal everyday existence by a combination of silly meds and an even sillier disease, and then I feel even more guilty because would my mother really be proud of me wasting my life away—a gift she never had.
It’s a hard knock life.