4:16 p.m. - 2005-02-13
The fall of the pretense
Woke up crying today.
This week has been so draining. Physical illness, a huge, wah wah, clash-of-the-Titans to-do in my bunny group which I cryptically wrote about a few days ago. Basically the group just had a problem with a member of the Board, and I got to be the lucky girl to give her the push out the door.
Lucky, lucky me.
And Morgan, my new foster bunny, who is beautiful and sweet and cuddly and may not get through her illness.
And our house is getting to me. It's like living in a sort of never ending renovation project that will not be finished for years because we don't have the money or resources or in my case the physical energy to start it. I love the house, I would never want to sell it, but I don't want it to stay this way forever.
Unfortunately it might.
It's all draining the sap out of me.
I have been coming to the sad and disturbing fact lately that for the last twenty five years I have dealt with my illness by pretending that I am not sick. I pretend I feel great, I pretend I can work 14 hour days, I pretend I am always up for socialising and I pretend I can rule the world.
I wouldn't even read books about lupus or epilepsy, or talk to my doctors about most of my symptoms. I just didn't want to hear what they had to say. It would ruin the illusion.
But after this twenty five years of pretending I have just hit a brick wall.
We have a joke in my mother's family that everyone lives to be 88. There are so many people on he side of the family who have lived to be 88, and then suddenly keeled over. Maude picked 80 - my mom's family went a few years over.
So if I do, in fact, live to be 88, then at 45 this is the start of the second half of my life. I was diagnosed with lupus at 23 and given two years to live - so this is also the start of my twentieth year of still being alive. It feels like a turning point somehow. It's the proverbial autumn of my life, and the time when I take a good deep look at who I really am.
And maybe the time I stop pretending to everyone, including myself. I'm sick, and it's really ok. There is nothing shameful about it. It's nothing I chose. It's ok if I go to bed.
I had a thought the other day. The thought was that I wish that there were spas where you could go and just be sick. And someone would give you massages, and they would tuck you in, and bring you tea, and no one would think you were a whining wimp if you suddenly burst into tears or couldn't make you way down the stairs at a running trot, or you needed help opening a jar because your hands hurt.
It would be a recovery spa.
I'd like to go to one of these, and I'd like to take Morgan.
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Speaking of Miss Morgan - you know, I'm not a big fan of lop earred rabbits, but I could make an exception for this girl.
She's tiny - four pounds, and quite feisty. She does a funny jumping/lunging move when you go in her pen because she has territory issues. Ginny does this, too, sometimes, but Ginny has the weight to back it up. With Morgan it's like being attacked by a Muppet.
Her abcess is oozing pus and will probably be more difficult to heal than Mirage's. Flushing it is a nightmare as I have to try and keep the saline solution out of her ear canal.
I haven't got my hopes up, but I'm doing my absolute best. After only one night I feel like we've become comrades in illness. Sickness buddies.
I'll have to post her picture soon.
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