The Torture Of Another Day

This is how my wife starts every day; the depth and scope of her agony, the muscle spasms, the paralysis, the piercing pain, the excruciating noise sensitivity, her total physical inability, lie way outside the scope of ordinary experience and comprehension.
THE TORTURE OF ANOTHER DAY
The layers of dense heavy fog-like emptiness
constrict and crush me.
They feel like they are a mile thick.
A mile thick between me and the outside world.
A mile thick between me and you
A mile thick between me and everything
A mile thick between me and anything.
I lay, crushed within this invisible boa-constrictor.
The pain pierces every part of me.
It screams.
It burns.
It writhes.
It itches.
It crawls.
It intensifies.
It throbs incessantly.
It demands total attention.
But then there is the overwhelming weakness
emptying each cell,
each muscle strand,
each muscle.
Everything is interconnected.
Nothing is working.
It inhabits my face
My eyes
My lips
My smile is gone
My mouth is wonky
My chest muscles
My back
My spine
My diaphragm.
It continues down my body.
It burns
Yet dissolves
My thighs
My knees
My calves
My feet
My toes.
My body will not hold me up.
My body cannot hold me up.
My heart is beating too slow.
Too slow to be upright.
How low will it go this time?
My muscles twist and shake
Constrict with contracted spasm
They screech with the agony.
Noise tortures me.
There is no lesser word that will describe it.
It’s pain seers me.
It’s precision paralyses me.
Movement in my visual field confuses me.
It’s path destroys mine.
My mind has long gone
Down a deep, dark, empty shaft
Into a bottomless pit.
Floating in the centre of nothing
I struggle to define myself.
I cannot think the thoughts I need.
I cannot find any way out of this.
Right now I am trapped
in a sea of impossibility.
I need so much.
Yet everything is lost to me.
Even my ability to speak, to explain,
To articulate.
To move.
Zero.
That is my life in this moment.
Zero ability.
Zero possibility.
All hope annihilated.
I have zero tolerance left for this
Yet
I have to wait
In jagged silence
Waiting for a shift
I cannot predict,
Remember exists
Or feel is possible.
This is the torture of another day.
Only just begun

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