Strange Interlude

I am a ghost in skin.  I can't sleep at night. I can't wake during the days.  I wander through my house with little energy to choose and do.  I have forgotten how to breathe when I sleep and am now on a machine that does that for me.  I took myself off my medication for my borderline high blood pressure because my heart was trying to flutter itself out of my chest through my mouth.   Before my medication debacle I was riding my bike, walking.  Now, it seems to take all my energy to drift from bed to couch to porch to backyard.

I practice the piano that I have not touched since 2000.  Left and right hand struggle to work together.  Notations on the page must be translated to keys touched and pressed.  I must close doors to protect my husbands ears from the slow halting struggle.  But I persist, liking the stretch as that part of my brain is resurrected from its long, dusty slumber.

The first part of the summer was spent in joy in my garden.  New flowers blooming daily.  Weeds pulled, beds planted.  Hands in dirt, smell of growing, rich and musty filling my nostrils.  New bird feeders are hung, new bird houses with smaller holes to attract the more elusive wrens, black capped chickadees and house finches rather than the ubiquitous house sparrows.  We had four bird families hatch in our yard this summer.  One wren, three house sparrows.  We enjoyed the marvelous bubbling brook melody of the wren until her babies hatched and she warned everyone away with her buzzing rattlesnake call.  The wren was our favorite, tiny, she would posture and spread her wings in some ancient dance and freeze till our attention wandered away.

Now, during the hot days of August, we are waiting for the asters and chrysanthemums to bloom.  The sunflowers from random seeds planted by squirrels, falling from bird feeders, are blooming; those that have not been pruned by the squirrels, headless stalks stretching toward the sun.  The garden is on auto pilot now, perennials slowing down, even fewer weeds to be pulled.  The light is changing as the sun's arc inches back toward the southern horizon.  Daybreak is later, darkness earlier.  The smell of the earth hotter, dustier.

I long for the energy and desire to do more.  I want to feel the pull and stretch of muscles well worked, moving under my skin, breath coming fast, heart beating strong.  I struggle in my own body, I do not fit any more.  My feet swell, skin becoming shiny and plastic.  Steps painful.  I feel as if I am scaling cliffs when I walk on stairs, one slip away from careening down the slopes.  I need the rush of oxygen, the dance of blood through my veins. 

I avoid mirrors.  I don't recognize myself; the puffy eyes, pouches above my cheekbones, the face broadened like a bulldogs.  I have regained the weight I slowly shed over 9 months of exercising.  I long for the energy to return to that life-giving physical endeavor.  I count my chins, contemplate my rolls, fight contempt for my physical body.  I'm not into self-loathing, but it is hard with this imposter's body.

I go to a nutritionist, hoping for a simple meal plan of meals that I can eat.  I leave with even more supplements, more food restrictions.  She says she'll have me eating all foods in a year.  I will give it a month, and assess how I feel.  I ponder the money I am giving her for this gift of well-being.  But I am at an impasse, a place I don't want to be.  I wish to go up, scale the cliffs that seem now insurmountable.  I'm tired of me, of a brain befuddled by fatigue and pain.  I wish to LIVE not just survive.  So I swallow pills.  I struggle to cook my meals.

I want to want to do other things, go places.  I want to want to create; do my batik, my stained glass, dance, move.  But I struggle to move, to breathe, to live.

And most of all, I am tired of myself.