health – Page 2 – One Woman's Quest

M.E. (Anacrostic)

Memories escape me…
You’d think I’m older than I am…
Autonomic nervous system misfiring…
Lucky I have a sense of humour –
Grief would otherwise be smothering –
I remain optimistic
Counsel myself to find the lesson

Every day is a question mark
Needs ever changing
Can I walk without aids?
Endure a drive in the car?
Past my time without overexerting?
Healing requires restorative sleep
Although, it’s been years since I woke up refreshed –
Letting go of such expectations part of the learning –
Occasionally energy comes in bursts,
Mostly, it’s a trick…
Yesterday’s self no longer exists
Energy a quagmire…
Longing does not equal capability
Initiative encounters brick walls
Too often I overdo it
Insensitive to my own reality
Stubbornly unwilling to learn.

(Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is the disease I’ve lived with for 10 years now. I’ve collected a few more to keep it company along the way, and, of course, had one or two issues to start with. Anyway, I was recently inspired to write an acrostic poem. I’m sure there is more left to learn about living with these challenges. Image my own, as usual.)

Harmonics

6:30 a.m. alarm sounds.
“Time to wake up!” Compliance commands.
“Just a little longer,” Sensibility suggests.
Guilt, like an incessantly annoying child
tugs on Conscience:
“Come on; there’s lots to do!”
Body does not respond.

Sleep wins
and dreams come:
homeless,
relying on friends,
no food,
backed up toilet,
children’s wide eyes
fearfully imploring:
When is this all going to end?
Guild propels a return to consciousness.

8:25 a.m.
“Up and at ’em! There’s a good soldier!”
Compliance attempts to be chipper.
“There’s really nothing more important than rest,”Sensibility suggests.
“Can’t lie in bed all day!” Guilt counters.
But body is MIA.

Dreams resurface:
Setting up house in a thoroughfare
people coming and going, oblivious to intrusion
co-workers indifferent,
eyes scolding – convicting…
Guilt mutates to rage,
Body chokes, gasps,
reaches for inhaler
sucking in desperate air.

11:11 a.m.
“That’s it! Up you get!”
“No! No! Rest is needed!”
“The day is wasted! There’s no getting it back!”

“Silence!”
A new voice emerges.

A collective intake of breath.

“Breathe,” comes the message. “Just breathe.”

A unified sigh.

“And breathe again.”

Tempers cool, and emotions begin to settle.

“What’s going on?” Guilt wonders.
“Just trying to stick to routine,” Compliance defends.
“It’s always been this way.”
“But she’s ill now,” Sensibility adds, “and there needs to be concessions.”

“Breathe,” the voice reasserts, and all sigh again.
“Just be in the stillness of the moment.”

Stillness has no voice.
Its language is compassion and infinite,
infinite wisdom.

“…and surrender.”

Compliance sobs with the release of such enormous obligation.
Sensibility gratefully gives over the burden of responsibility,
and Guilt…well Guilt is little,
and happily snuggles up to Unconditional Love.

“There, there,” Voice soothes. “Isn’t harmony so much better?”

Body concurs and rises out of bed.

(Harmonics first appeared here September 2014, five months after illness left me bedridden. Image my own)

Small Measures

Charcoal-etched dreams
smudged on the canvas of time…

Direction has been lacking,
understanding remiss

That I remain – sail upright –
is feat enough…

(Tuesdays I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Sketch my own)

The Answer

3:33 AM
Startled awake
The answer
there, on the brink

Of course I lose it
rising to answer another call
Oh, how it taunts

Try to recapture the moment
find the right twist of body
as if I’m a radio tuner
signal lost

And what answer would that be, anyway?
Now fully awake, pondering questions –
only one applies

This newly formed fear
I’ve dared not voice it –
it cuts deep

Is there an answer
and if so, do I want to hear it?

I fall back to sleep
awake hours later
mind blissfully empty.

(Image my own)

Discord

Does illness have a voice,
and if so; is it melancholy,
or dark and dank, divulging
deepest despair, or revealing
a vileness of nature?

Discord creeps along my veins,
disrupts muscles, systems failing
under the oppression –
“Stay strong,” friends counsel,
cannot hear the gathering storm,
feel the heaviness cloaking me.

I am not myself, but then;
who am I? Is disease a mutation
of the original sin – punishment
for fatal sins, or redemption
wrapped as trial – the whispers
gain clarity – I am faltering…

(Discord originally appeared here May, 2019. Image my own. Living with chronic, often debilitating disease, is an ongoing challenge. There is no cure, no end in sight, and yet, we must go on. This is for my fellow warriors, wondering, some days, what it is all about.)