post 36 : truth is

It’s lucky I have a strong mind to semi-make-up for this pathetically weak, clumsy excuse for a body.

I’m tired. I’ve been tired for 10 years and I’m growing resentful of the people that tell me they are exhausted, as if they have any comprehension of what that is.

Their shoulders hurt. Oh no. Let me push down hard on your purple bruise, hold my finger there and make the pain cover your entire body. Let it throb for weeks at a time; unrelenting. Let me drive a hammer into your knee and watch you not curl up in agony. My fingers hurt typing this. I have heat packs covering my body and my medication has grown ineffective, as if I should have appreciated those 6 months of blissful numbness that I was given. As if I should not have expected more. I struggle not to cry all of the time.

I am scared. I’m terrified at the prospect of growing old. And it’s not for the narcissistic reasons like those conceited others, either. Give me a wrinkly body still full of life. Give me thinning grey hair and a slight inability to stand straight and proud. Give me a body that looks as old as it feels.

More than the prospect of my body growing old, my greatest fear is that my mind will at a greater pace. As if I don’t already have something that could be described as chronic forgetfulness, at times oblivion. The words “I forgot” are becoming all too familiar and the response “You’re hopeless” makes me want to throw punches, if I had the energy to throw punches. Do you not think I already know? Do you not think I would help it if I could? Do you not think it frustrates me beyond comprehension that this 26 year old mind cannot remember that she was going downstairs for a reason, that she must have been in the supermarket for some sort of food stuff, but what it was has escaped her?

The look on my face as I struggle to remember the conversation we had last week is not one of feigning for attention, but rather an “Honestly Tali, search your mind a little harder, it’s got to be there” and an internal eye roll at oneself. It is frustration.

Determination. That’s all I have left in me, and it surprises me constantly that I even have that.