Enhancing My Misery

Through the struggle of keeping my darkness at bay.

My body is rebelling.

Friday the tenth was my fifth and final bilateral knee injection of the series of five that I had to get.

Every Friday.

For the past five weeks.

I’ve had to get injections in both knees.

It’s a “gel-like” medication that is longer lasting for me. 

And it’s less detrimental to the little bit of still existing cartridge I have left than regular cortisone.

It’sp a bigger injection than cortisone.

There’s much more fluid in the syringe.

I can feel the fluid fill up my joint space during the procedure.

To an uncomfortable level with the first few.

As the weeks went on my body was responding correctly.

My doctor told me that my joint space was extremely difficult to get into with the first three injections.

He told me that the space had opened up quite a bit with the last two.

And they became easier for him.

And it feels like it.

I’m super sore from getting weekly injections for more than a month.

But it’s a different sore.

It’s like a procedure sore.

Bruised sore.

And the arthritic pull and burn has subsided for now.

Which is welcomed relief.

I do think that all of the aches and pains I have from my arthritis help my darkness gain ground.

I don’t talk too often about my chronic pain from my arthritis here.

But it absolutely affects my mood.

One hundred billion trillion percent.

My ability to function plummets when having to deal with this intense bullshit.

These silent, agony inducing pain levels.

They make it easier to feel overwhelmed.

To feel stagnant.

And unremarkable.

Becuase on top of everything else.

I can’t move properly anymore.

I have a hard time bending my legs outside of walking.

I can’t squat anymore.

I can’t sit with my legs crisscrossed.

I can barely get off the floor without pain anymore.

I can’t put any – and I mean any, pressure on my kneecaps anymore.

It feels like my knee caps are going to disintegrate the rare times I accidentally do.

My body is so weak in some areas.

And that’s an endless frustration all its own.

I don’t think I can take anymore pain.

Emotional.

Physical.

Mental.

Arthritic.

Any of it.

It’s in my bones.

Encompassing all of my major joints.

And cuts through me like a dull knife on an overly ripe banana.

It can consume me in a totally different way than anything else.

My mind will remind me that walking brings pain.

That cleaning my apartment will make me uncomfortable and stiff.

That I can’t do much anything for longer than twenty minutes without my lower back spazzing.

Or my knees giving out.

It’s making life tedious.

It makes me hurt more.

It melts into my mental illness and consumes me whole.

I’m glad I can start to notice the effects it has on me.

Because I’m slowly becoming able to separate this shit.

Physical vs mental.

How they bounce off of one another. 

Encourage one another’s demise.

They have similar but different ways that they show up.

My physical pain usually brings depression and rage.

A void of any and everything but anger.

I have become unable to move as much as I used to.

And the frustration with myself.

And my ability to not properly function.

Consumes every part of me.

Dragging me behind it as if I’m a prized kill.

The mental pain is almost more debilitating.

I feel like I can’t function at a base level.

Everything can get so confusing.

And my vision blurs in and out from the self preservation techniques of my dissociation issues.

I lock onto a spot and I’m gone.

Unknowingly letting the world pass by me for chunks at a time.

And when the voices decide to surface.

It’s game on for my survival mode.

My body and mind are sometimes in sync.

In the worst possible way.

When I become mentally anguished my body tenses up.

Refusing to release.

I become a ball of constricted muscles.

And even with breathing exercises and writing.

I don’t always have the ability to talk myself down.

I’m due for my Invega injection at the end of next week.

And things get ramped up around this time.

Leading up to it.

The daily, faded radio noise becomes distinct voices again.

I become paranoid.

And feel as though I’m being watched.

That there are cameras in the vents if I look too close.

I heard the neighbors talking about me all day yesterday.

And the day before.

And the day before.

And the day before.

And so on.

They watch me from their chairs on the landing up there.

On the third floor.

I know they’re not ever up there when I hear them.

But I can’t always trust my vision all the time either.

It can lie to me.

It does lie to me.

I can’t help but notice my physical pain brings a different type of mental disconnect.

Not only do I become disconnected from reality.

I become disconnected with my body.

I think this is why sometimes I feel like I’m not here.

Like I’m not in the same world as everyone else.

That it feels like someone else is in control of me at times.

Especially when I’m overwhelmed with pain levels.

Unfortunately all of these pain levels I have play off of one another.

They collaborate.

Enhancing my misery.

And wreaking literal havoc in my life.

It’s never ending and unforgiving.

It makes days that are practically pain free few and far between.

Mental.

And physical.

– Keren