Just an Update

 My injured leg is healing, but still isn't letting me use the lifting aid to raise it. I need to have enough strength in the leg to hold it still while I use my arm strength to pull it up. Any torque in the knee is painful enough to make me cry. 

So I try to stiffen my leg, and the bone in my calf - tibia, fibula, I don't know, maybe both - starts causing me pain. If I try to push through, my muscles literally give up, like my conscious mind has no say, there. If someone else lifts my leg with both calf and thigh support, it's fine, but that's not how people seem to want to work. Everyone looks at me like I'm insane when I mention the thigh. 

I don't know if I'll ever be small enough to stand, again. My left leg absolutely cannot handle weight bearing, and both my arms and my right leg are not strong enough to hold me up without its help. I tried counting calories to lose weight for a month. My forearm skin got loose and floppy, and I have turkey neck, now, but my thighs and hips are no smaller. 

I thought of buying a scale for the lift, but they're pricey. So I don't know what I weigh now, either. 

So I can't get up at all, now. My new OT goal is to return to sitting bedside, so that I may do a more effective job washing myself. Ideally, I'd like to see my boyfriend again, someday, and I'd like for us to get physical. I miss him. I miss human touch. I specifically miss touching *him*. Either way, I'd like to be really clean, but I wouldn't even consider physical intimacy if I wasn't. It's unthinkable to me. I thought about trying to date someone else. There are disabled woman fetishists out there, I'm sure I could find someone, somehow. We're open; if I dated someone else, I'd just have to tell him. He's not a jealous human. 

The thing is, I *am* a jealous human. The thought of dating a second person to break up the loneliness makes me angry at my boyfriend. I get angry that the thought of me with someone else doesn't bother him. I do not understand how no jealousy works. I'm his, why is he ok sharing me with any random person? I don't love that he's in another woman's bed right now, although it doesn't kill me the way that it did when I was a secret. I was right, and being acknowledged as primary by all involved parties does make the situation much more tolerable for me. 

This is the only kind of relationship that he wants, and he's the only person that I want to be in a relationship with. That's why I agreed to this. That doesn't mean that I'm OK with zero in person time.

That's where I'm at right now. I haven't seen him since February, and it's July. I know he loves me, and we usually have some kind of contact every day, but I miss him. My fingertips and my lips miss him. A lot. 

Drugs Are a Good Enough Excuse

 Under the influence of drugs that you don't usually take, and not under the influence of the ones that you do can change your behavior. 

In some cases, it can reveal underlying feelings, but in others, it can mask the big ones up top that still exist. 

It explains why I got hurt well enough for me to forgive, completely. Just putting this in here for continuity, in case someone reads this. Wintle and I talked it out. I'm actually coming to terms with the second girlfriend, because even knowing that he's going on a trip with her doesn't feel like someone is physically squeezing my heart. He used the kind of phrases that made me feel validated. He told me that he discusses me with her, and she knows that I'm there, and that I'm a "keeper".

So that's not my problem, today.

Today my biggest problem is my body. My stomach feels like everything I've ever eaten has turned into a liquid at a temperature too high to be comfortable, and I am too handicapped to use a toilet (I cannot afford enough help to get me to a bedside commode, it would take two people being here 24/7, because who knows when you'll get a stomach ache?). So I'm filthy. I will be cleaned up soon, I can afford *some* help. That will make some of me feel better, but my other problem is beyond help. 

I fell and hurt my left leg. It's healing, but there's so much swelling. It feels like my pants are too painfully tight on my legs, but I'm not wearing any pants. 

Getting In to the Jealousy Issues

 I used to believe that our love was strong enough that it could withstand anything, even if you opened your heart to more people. None of those people would ever be me. 

None of those people would ever have the history that we have. 

They would have their own connection with you, but they wouldn't have *our* connection. 

But today you forgot that we scheduled a phone call. Forgot. It's been more than a week since we've had a good face-to-face chat, and I was really looking forward to it. You weren't excited enough about it to remember that we'd even made the plans. 

*You* chose the day. If you were considering letting the wind and your date take you where it may, you could have chosen a different day. But you didn't. Planning a date is a promise. Not being available for it without a tangible reason is an insult. You weren't just late, you went radio silence. That's an insult. 

You've never, ever treated me like this, even when you were married to someone else, and I was a secret. 

Now, I'm afraid that our connection got severed, but the cut was so far away that I didn't get to see when it happened. 

The Litany of Sadness Continues

 I don't feel "right". My heartbeat feels off, I'm having trouble concentrating, and my left shin is very sore and hot to the touch. It is also swollen, as is my left foot. I have limited range of motion down my entire left side. 

My pain levels are better than yesterday, but they're not *good*. When was the last time that my body felt good? February third, I think, when I had sexy endorphins running all up and through me. Every other minute it's bad, or it's asleep.

This morning I woke up yelling, "FUCK, LEG PAIN!"  It was very jarring.

I should be icing my left leg, but I'm being a big baby about having to ask for the ice pack. My aide was here when the therapist said to ice it. She should be taking care of me. That means bringing me a fucking ice pack when I'm injured without me specifically asking her to. 

I am cutting off my nose to spite my face. 

I'm not even going to get in to my jealousy issues in this post. Nope. 

List of Complaints

 I want more special treatment than I'm getting. I'm probably too greedy, but I did say "want", not "deserve". And I really want it. 

I don't want to exist in this body any more. Not the way it is. I can't figure out how to make it better. I tried something yesterday to make it better, and it went so wrong that now I have no hope. I have no ideas left, no motivation. I'm going through the motions of my regular life, with no joy. 

Who would have thought that my serious depression would be caused by physical problems, and not the sense of undying loneliness? 

My loneliness is definitely mortal. It gets killed off once a week, or so. 

No motivation other than immediate pain relief. I'm motivated to get that, but I'm unable to accomplish it. 

Don't want to do this any more. I am terrified of the only alternative that is presenting itself. 

Eight Days Later

 I’m feeling very disrespected. An “I love you” message on Friday night when you’re with someone else and then nothing substantial at all for 48 hours is not ok. That’s not respecting me and it’s not ok.

I don’t want to fight, or change the rules. I just want respect. 

Still Grateful for this Void

 Hoo boy. 

You wanted to know what being with a woman older than yourself? I wish you could have just waited until I got older. 

Every time I think about you touching someone else's skin, part of me doesn't want your fingers to touch mine, any more. 

I don't know why I don't feel like sex can be just sex. 

Wait, now I understand that I do feel like it can. 

I had relationships before I had this particular love. I have had sex just to have sex. It's fun. I understand that sometimes people have lots of reasons to have sex or not to have it. I don't judge people who live their lives, and their physical relationships do not involve me. 

Today, though, today I find myself in the questionable position of not knowing if I'm in a physical relationship or not. It feels like I am. Even if I'm not, I love. I feel love for one particular person, and I don't want to be with anyone else. 

He does, though. This is not new information. This is a me problem. 

I don't feel the way he does, and I don't understand how it feels to be in his head. Why is he curious about sex with other people if our sex is as good as he claims? Why doesn't he want to see me again, ever? Does he not want to see me again, ever? I swear that I believe that he loves me. 

I'm just always really afraid that he's suddenly going to stop. The inequality of our feelings about fidelity scares me to the core of my being. 

I want to think that I can hold on to my pragmatic stance and live with it. Literary characters live with it all the time. 

When you've agreed to an open relationship with a set of rules, how do you get over the feeling that your partner is out there, open to starting new relationships because your love alone isn't enough and it never will be?

Am I even right to want to get over that feeling?

I am a broken, misshapen human. Someone loves me. I'm so much luckier than so many. I need to appreciate the good. 

Right now, though, while he's off to spend time with someone who is not me, someone whose skin he has touched more recently than mine - how do I fight down the feeling of nausea? 

I guess I just fucking do. 

Glass Half Full

 I can stick to my own rules and be sad about it 100% of the time, or I can accept a different set of rules and be happy for more than 50% of the time. Really happy, for more than half the time.

There is not a choice where I get 100% my way, that simply doesn’t exist.  

In my head, the logic is so clear that I hardly believe I could even consider another choice. 

The part where I’m not happy, though, the part where I know that I’m going to cry myself to sleep, tonight, that’s when it’s just really hard, you know?

Hello Darkness

 I'm in too much pain to sleep. The painkillers didn't really work, today. I was just overly stoned and in pain. My aide had a second shadow aide an inch and a half behind her. They overlapped. 

Anyway, now it's after midnight and I don't want to talk to any of the people who are also so messed up that they're still awake, so I find myself here. 

Sometimes it's nice to have an abyss to shout into. 

Adult Language Warning

 I snapped at you for doing something unhelpful. 

You snapped back that you wouldn't just leave it like that, like an asshole. 

Do you think that you've never been that asshole?

Butterflies? At This Age?

 He sent me a video message. I listened to everything he had to say. I care about it all, because I care about *him*.

He went to end the message. I started to hope he'd say "I love you". Then he did. 

Butterflies. At this age. 

Fighting Against Nature

 When I was younger, and my father still alive, he had a long-term girlfriend that he didn't like that much. He called her "The Ditz", when referring to her, rather than her name. If he made it to bedtime without her calling, he'd exclaim in pleasure that he'd had a "Ditz Free Day". I asked him, if he didn't want to be with her, why did he not just break it off?

His reply was that he was trying to be so obnoxious that she'd dump *him*, and he wouldn't have to hurt her feelings. 

I told him that any time one person wants to end a relationship, but the other person doesn't want to, feelings get hurt. That's just the nature of the beast. 

I love someone. I want to tell the world. He says that he can't find a way to do that without hurting his other girlfriend's feelings. I said that's because there isn't one. 

I’d Pay the Devil

 He’s gone. If anybody needs me, I’ll be trapped on an air bed, unable to get up under my own power, dealing with 4000 medical issues and crying my face off because my love has left town. 

He says that he loves me. I don’t understand how this works. 

Did it to Myself

 I'm awake because my heart is breaking. 

I wish I knew what was real. I think I'm real. 

FML, 2024 Version

 I am in a rehab. I am spending a second night on a bed too small for me because someone messed up. PT came to evaluate me, and they'd been lied to about my ability to stand, pivot, and walk. They also kept using the word "baseline" incorrectly. Idiots. So many stupid people. So many smart people annoyed by having to work with the stupid ones. 

A nurse ignored my pain pill request because it was too close to the end of her shift. Whatever, but she didn't leave a note or anything that I had requested them. The floor aide was shocked. 

I wanted to be asleep by midnight. It is 1:20 in the morning. I finally got some pain medicine, the lights are still on in here, despite my request for dark, and every time someone opens the door to my room, a disgusting plume of "gas station bathroom" smell wafts in to my room. 

Oh, and I don't have the ability to turn the lights in my room on and off. Gotta ask. Every time. 

One last rude jab -what the hell does the hair on these women look like if they think these cheap-ass, janky looking wigs are *better*? One of them had something in her head that looked like an imitation beaver skin. 

More… Positive Stuff?

Today, I didn’t feel well, in the grossest of human ways. Unpleasant to be around, pulling pain faces, being generally human body stinky. 

I had a date planned. Know what he did? Nothing I have is contagious, so he came to my house, and held my hand and got me water while I went through it. He distracted me with chatting about important and trivial things. He held my hand some more. He told me how pretty he thought my hair was. We watched a TV show, pausing it a lot to tell each other stuff. When he had to go, he kissed me gently and thanked *me* for really seeing him, and loving him for the whole person that he is. 

I’ve been so up and so down about him for so long, that this feels insane. It does feel real, though. 

I Hate Being a Secret

 I wanted so badly to put proof of my relationship on the Internet that I resorted to here. There are people out there who know this is my boyfriend, and there are people being kept in the dark on purpose, because it would hurt their feelings. I'm sick and tired of their feelings always being more important than mine. 

I like this photo, even though it's a little awkward, because he leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. It wasn't discussed in advance, he just wanted to. 

Afraid That Posting This Stuff Will Get Me Death Threats

I just saw a headline calling the Gaza conflict, which is terrible from every angle, "Israel's War". I am incredibly angry at that writer. It's not any one entity's war, you can't have a war with a single side. 

You *can*, though, have a country that is trying to work under very strained conditions with a group that wants to wipe them off the earth. You *can* have that country retaliate for being brutally and suddenly attacked en masse, at civilian sites, grabbing hostages, beheading people and parading corpses through the streets. 

Does Israel make the right choices in all of this? I don't think so. But I don't think that they're the only ones who own it, either. 

From the Al Jazeera article: “No child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on October 7 – or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then.” 

I agree. But please, please do not forget that on 10/7, the violence was *against* Israel, on Israeli ground. 

Political is Personal

I'm going to get personal. I am anti-war. I do not want anyone shooting at anyone else, for any reason. I am pro human. Yet an American posting "Support for Palestine" feels like a giant slap in my face. 

There's not a nation called Palestine. It's an intellectual construct of a pre-biblical area that has modern country borders drawn throughout it. Israel may only be legitimized by some drawings that the British made after WWII, but it was an actual form of legitimacy of *some* kind on the international stage. 

You know what a Palestinian born in Jordan is? A Jordanian. Anyone born in Libya is Libyan  same idea for Yemen, Egypt, all of it.

I do not call myself a Jew Living in America, I call myself an American who is Jewish.

I do not wish for the IDF to wipe all Palestinians off the Earth. Jews don't have well-known chants calling for that. Are there some? I don't know them. There is a very well-known chant, "From the river to the sea", and the very meaning of it is promoting genocide of the Jewish people. Because they say that we're evil.

I'm not evil, I'm regular. I have some good points and some bad points, and I'm normal.

I believe that Hamas is starving their own people to death in order to convince the world that Israel is a genocidal evil entity.

If even one more person that I know shows a "support for Palestine" image, my head will explode. 

The minute Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip, the digging of offensive tunnels started, and bombs started flying in to southern Israel at random. 

Maybe I've been tricked, but these are the first hand accounts from old friends. I won't mind losing a few new ones if I have to. 

Still, all I really want is for people to give peace a chance. 

Void Meets Girl

 Am I self-sabotaging if I don’t ask for help? What if I’m not asking because I don’t know anyone who can help with this? What if I’m not asking because I’ve already asked so many times that people are starting to avoid my eyes? 

I’m not in control of my body, any more. My brain isn’t able to make excuses for it. I’d say that I’d given up on the treatment, but 2 out of my 3 conditions literally have no cure. 

So I’m a filthy monster that can’t clean herself, and I cannot afford to pay enough help to keep me clean. My skin is irritated, and I physically can’t reach parts of my body that need lotion. I also can’t afford to buy enough good-quality lotion. 

I wonder why I bother living a life like this. I would never end it all, myself, I love too many people to hurt them like that. My question is, though, how am I still alive? How can I lose my ability to stand for any long amount of time, then to sit up without my feet raised, then to sit down from a standing position, then to walk, then to pivot, then to stand unaided at *all* - very little on me still works beyond my hands. 

Why do I have to live like this? Why didn’t I just expire?

…and wear my toupee. There’s one for the HCSR fans that aren’t reading this.