I’m still in a lot of pain this week.

My pain levels have been waking me up at night, every night.

It’s quite exhausting.

I’ve at least been able to take naps this week.

I’m not always able to.

But still, I’m waking up constantly with throbbing knees or an aching shoulder or pain shooting down my ankle and big toe.

My back has been popping, but not a comfortable popping – a sharp pop that hurts most times.

A few discs above where they did my lumbar ablation (on my  L4-L5) my back is quite achy.

I was having a muscle cramping that same spot, around my  L2-L3 for a few weeks about a month ago.

But that has faded into this uncomfortable popping now.

I finally got some orthopedic appointments scheduled for this upcoming week.

One this upcoming Tuesday, and then one the following day, on Wednesday.

They’re very picky with how many body parts they can go over per appointment.

Which led me to having to schedule the two separate appointments.

One for my knees.

One for my left ankle and left big toe.

And I’m waiting on the referral for my right ankle and right big toe.

And I’ll probably have to have an appointment for my left shoulder at some point too.

But we’ll see.

They never find anything on my left shoulder imaging.

At least not on X-rays.

They find a fraying of my rotator cuff on MRI’s.

So I don’t know if it’s worth it, ya know?

My pain clinic is doing an injection next Friday on my left shoulder..

So at least there’s that…

The gal who answered the phone at the orthopedic office asked me if my knees hurting stemmed from an injury or what.

And I told her that they found the arthritis when the did an MRI for my MCL tear (a grade II tear) back in 2006.

I also told her I was sorta relived I had an answer for why my knees had been hurting for years already.

She replied that “Well, no one’s knees are at 100%”

Okay…

There was literally no need to say that.

It was rude and dismissive.

Talk about invalidating.

Besides, does everyone have mild/moderate arthritis at the age of 26?

I doubt it.

But, these pain levels, and people like that lady, are affecting my mood, big time.

I’m super fucking depressed.

I had friends visit from Michigan at the beginning of the week and it was so fun, and so good to see them.

But then they left and it’s like I crashed.

And I realized how truly alone I am.

How untrusting I am of new people.

And how scared I am to let new people in.

I don’t trust anyone that I don’t know.

I’ve had too many people leave me to be able to trust anyone anyway.

And I also feel like the EMDR therapy work I’m doing right now is affecting (and increasing) my pain levels.

Everything/every article I could find, spoke of how EMDR is great for reducing fibromyalgia, phantom limb and post surgery pain levels.

But I couldn’t find anything on reducing pain levels with arthritis.

In fact I found in several articles that it won’t do much for pain with “an underlying physical condition”, which I’m assuming arthritis would be in that category.

My therapist is asking her EMDR mentor this upcoming week during their call.

And she said we could take a break for now.

Which I think is a good idea.

I’ve also been worried about how much of the memories we’ve worked on already, how little I can recall of them now.

I mean, I know they happened.

But I can’t place myself there anymore.

Which just seems so foreign to me.

It’s like I’m watching the memory from a really far distance away.

I’m no longer in it at all.

Which makes me feel like I’m sorta loosing myself.

And when I told my therapist this, she just said “oof” and we both got quiet for a minute.

I had to bring it up.

I mean, my trauma is what I remember in my life, ya know?

I don’t remember the good times at all.

I remember being scared a lot as a kid.

I remember getting bullied every day too.

I remember being confused, and on edge, and anxious all the time through my life so far.

And as an adult I remember the bad times too.

I remember all of my traumas like they happened yesterday.

What I fear the most is that ALL of my memories will be in the distance if I get rid of my traumas.

That I won’t be able to really recall ANYTHING after we’re done processing my traumas.

And I know, it may sound wild to you that I don’t want to let go of my traumatic memories, but when it’s all I have, it’s really, really hard to say goodbye to them.

And like I said, it’s not that they leave my memory completely.

It’s more like I can no longer put myself in the situation.

I can only think about it super objectively.

And that’s what my therapist reminded me of too.

She said the memories aren’t gone, we’re just taking you out of the looping.

And I know that, I get it.

But it feels lonely to me already.

She encouraged me to go out to my parents house and look at pictures to help me remember good times.

Hopefully the photos will spark something.

So I asked my parents and they said they’re more than happy to pull some old photo albums out.

So that’s good.

I’m going over there this weekend.

it’s now Sunday and I went to my parents house yesterday to look at photos-.

They even sent me home with some.

But I still couldn’t recall the bulk of them.

Which made me feel even worse than I already did.

It’s lonely and isolating behind my eyes.

I wish I could just open the door to my memories and let them flood my brain.

But for some reason, I just fucking can’t.

For some reason, my mind 

I wish I could just… I dunno… be more normal and remember typical things like my graduations, and even though I’m divorced, I would love to be able to remember my wedding.

But I have a fear they’re not going to surface ever again.

Last night, after I got home from my parents house, I had massive amounts of external auditory hallucinations.

It sounded like two guys were outside my apartment, talking about how they were going to hurt and kill me.

Fucking great, right?

I don’t handle stress well in the least – even the stress of not remembering things.

It’s beyond frustrating.

Maybe one day they’ll find a medication that actually takes all of my symptoms away…

Until then, I suppose I’ll just wait…

– Keren