Pages in my Book

The Preakness is on TV...I see all the people partying in the infield and think back to the time I was there...as a tour guide and getting paid for it of course, as I always seemed to find a way to do, and having the time of my life!  The memories though, rather than make me smile, are haunting.  A constant reminder that I once was a person who had energy and lived life to its fullest and now know I will never be that person again.  It is a certainty.   Simple math that even my lyme damaged brain can do.....doctor's visits, IV's, supplements, treatments, all cost money...money I no longer have.  So I lay here and die slowly.  I can't say it, or I am accused of being "negative".  But I am thinking it every single minute of every single day.

I have memorized every spot on the bedroom walls, every crack in the ceiling, after countless hours and even more days just laying here unable to do anything but fantasize about a life I no longer have, or how to stop this existence from lingering on.  The pictures hanging on the wall bring me back to my days of skiing Heavenly CA, hiking Mt Zion, taking my son to The Atlantis Resort, my life in Hawaii and more.  My blood feels like it is actually boiling I am so angry. I hate everyone and everything right now.  I can't stand the sight of people on tv having fun.  I hear someone laughing outside and it makes me cringe.  My sister stops by and asks "why aren't you outside enjoying the day?....it's gorgeous out!"  OMG!!!!!!!!!!  How does she still not get it?

By my door hangs a painting of a tiny cottage where I lived with my son, next door to my Dad.  I want so to go back to a day there, where he would walk over with blueberry pancakes still hot off the griddle, chuckling as he watched my awkward attempt at cutting firewood for the night.

Above, on a shelf are my diploma's; both from High School and College and it reminds me of how hard I worked to get where I did, only to get striken down by an insect when I finally arrived.  My diploma is leaning against a decorative box, filled with prescription pain killers, failed antibiotics and next to a stack of journals I used to faithfully write in daily when I so ignorantly thought this was a short term mishap rather than the death sentence it has become.  I no longer journal my daily symptoms.  Put simply,  I feel like I am dying  every day.

I see a shell, laying on a chest; the very shell I found on the ocean floor while diving in Bora Bora.  I remember sitting on the shore later that day, pounding it against a coconut, driving its inhabitant out of my newfound souvenir.  I recall living with the locals in a hut on that very beach, never wanting to leave this lifestyle of simplicity and wonder I had recently discovered where we fished together as a village for our evening meal,  and rejoiced in sharing the awe of the sunset.  I didn't speak their language, nor they mine, but words were not needed.

Near my bed, hanging on the wall, are a series of photographs of Italy, where I once spent a few days with the promise of returning to live when my son went off to college.  He left last fall; I should be there now, speaking Italian and eating pasta and I become more and more resentful.

Yes, everyone has regrets and we all have missed opportunities.  But I am not mourning any poorly made decisions or dreams I simply never got around to achieving.  I lived!  I did everything I set out to do without making excuses.  These memories haunt me because each one is a page in my book which was never supposed to end this way.  We are our own authors, and my story has many many more chapters.  These empty pages I cannot fill make me hate my life now even more.

I recall what my Dad said to me when he was first diagnosed with cancer.  He promised me he would survive, assuring me all the while that it was not his time, not the way his story was destined to end.  "Everyone has their own story, and dying of cancer is not in mine".  But, he did die, despite his courageous fight and his will to pen his outcome differently.  What does that say of mine?  If he could not win his fight, change his story, how will I?  After five years I'm not better.. but am actually worse.

This is no life but nobody will listen.  I refuse to rot away in my bed day after day waiting for God to decide when I have suffered enough.  I fantasize about taking the last of my energy for my final chapter.  Tonight I will dream of how I will fill those final pages.  Afterall, every story should have a happy ending.