Hope

I had hoped the day before yesterday was a fluke.

I had hoped that, by some miracle, it wasn't going to happen again.

Summer had been so good to me.

Why couldn't it just last forever?

Yet, this morning I woke with that old familiar pain. The pain that causes you to scream out loud and moan when moving, despite your best efforts not to. The pain that makes you want to plead with someone to knock you unconscious. The pain that radiates through all parts of your body. The pain that feels stabbing, burning, piercing, throbbing, pounding, radiating all at once. The pain that makes you laugh at the sad faces on a scale of 1 to 10, knowing that the majority of people out there have no idea what pain like this is like. The pain doctors say "most people" would not be able to handle. The pain that doctors willingly, with no questions ask, want to prescribe Oxycontin and IV drugs for. The pain that I can't take prescriptions for because the side effects render me useless as a mother.

I do this every year. I feel so much better through the warm and hot months that I start to secretly, inwardly hope that I've gotten better. I know that the doctors have told me there is no cure. I know that the doctors have told me that it will only get worse. I know that the doctors have given me a death sentence.

Yet, I can't help but hope. Hope that somehow, someway, it will get better. Hope that I won't end up spending most of winter in bed. Hope that I can run and jump and hike and bike.

Then, when cooler weather hits, and I wake unable to get out of bed without help, the feeling of defeat starts flitting around the edges. The anger starts to rise. The reality of how complicated life is as a single parent that can't hold down a "real" job. The unjustness and unfairness of it all. The envy that comes with seeing capable people with healthy bodies. I want to scream to God that it isn't fair.

Yet, I know that life isn't about fair. It isn't. Life is what it is and the only part we can change is how we approach it and deal with it.

Problem is...... financial responsibilities don't stand by and wait till summer comes back with warm weather and the bodies ability to function.

I am feeling very defeated today. Very tired. And above all else........ in PAIN.