My head cold becomes, with very little warning, a perforated eardrum. It’s right up there on the pain scale, with childbirth and wisdom teeth removal. I don’t think I’ve ever been so miserable.
I vacate to my mum’s house, obviously taking my children with me. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I try to remember back Before, when I had life under control and didn’t get sick like this all the time…. and, really, that memory gets harder and harder to sustain. Isn’t ‘normal’, by definition, what happens most of the time? Which means, by default, this is ‘normal’ now. ‘Normal’ encompasses find the littlest things too difficult to deal with. I fall apart so easily.
I compare myself to my own mum and wither in her shadow. She seems to just keep going- she takes care of me, of my kids, she works full time, she helps out my brother and continues to sort out my Gran‘s estate. She makes Easter morning special for my children in a way I just would have never have found the brain-space for- she stays up to track Easter Bunny footprints in talcum powder, to spread tiny bits of cotton ball ‘tail’ in a trail to their Easter presents.
Easter Bunny pawprints. Courtesy of my awesome Mum.
I’m eternally grateful. I don’t know what would happen to us, to me, to my kids, if she wasn’t around. At the same time, the guilt eats at me. I want to fall at her feet and beg forgiveness for being so crap at this, for being so weak. Her reaction, of course, would be tsk, tsk, stop being so ridiculous. Which might not help anything at all.
Four days of laying in bed, on one side only, trying to drain goop and fluid past the excruciating pain of a punctured eardrum… it’s enough to sink me into a hopeless blackness, where I’m wasting my time, wasting everyone else’s time. I find myself, without a future to focus on, without daily hubris to keep me busy…. I find myself feeling bitter and angry, rolling past events around in my mouth like sour lollies until they coat my tongue in citric acid that I can’t spit out.
Being in a dark place is never nice. I want to shake it off, to emerge from it.
But, of course, the pain is too intense for any kind of sudden movement. I’m too irritated, too uncomfortable, to do much right now except wallow.
{ 8 comments }
