decaying

 I’m starting to forget what it was like to be healthy. It’s something I never envisioned happening. Believing for so long that this illness was short term, the reality now looms over me like a monster I can’t quite run from. 

There’s something so horrid and cruel about the way i’ve been forced to watch myself decay, i’ve had a front row seat to my own deterioration for years now.

Sometimes I cant quite decide if the worst part of this condition is my own physical destruction or the mental toll it takes.

I’ll be honest. The nights where i feel how i used to are getting further and further apart.

There aren’t many times as of late where i’m not gripped with the primal urge to just claw my own muscles out from under my skin.

I think at this point i’d do anything to get rid of my pain. 

I’d do anything to get rid of the shadow of myself that still taunts me, reminding me of what i used to be and what i am now.

Even as i’m writing this, on the bus on the way home from a job i shouldn’t be doing, all i want to do is rip off my limbs and sob. My shoulder is dislocated and i can feel my kneecap slipping, but i’ve still got 20 minutes left of this journey before i get off the bus and walk home.

I’ve taken to praying to a God i don’t quite believe in at times, desperation does weird things to people i guess.  

All my pain is so raw and full force at all times, and when i’m not in pain im completely numb, effectively running on complete autopilot.

At work I stand for hours with no breaks, racing back and forth between desks. I shouldn’t be able to do it, but i do.

My legs grow numb after the first hour, my brain when i talk to customers is just replaying my training, a subconscious script that starts to protect my own brain from becoming overwhelmed. 

Sometimes i feel like i take a backseat in my own body, but then again, i don’t have a choice. 

But that autopilot comes at a cost, the cost of my limbs when i finally get home.

Sometimes it stops before i even get on the bus, my legs grow heavy and i wonder how long i can keep going before i collapse on the linoleum. 

Other times my body waits until i’m finally in bed, when i’m still for the first time in the day. Then it hits full force. The cost of existing and working in this body. 

The pain is so raw and all consuming i can no longer even cry. It chokes me, in all honesty. Even minor movements become too painful to bear and im left to deal with it alone in the darkness of my room. 

Although i’m not sure id rather have people see me in that state, i have a reputation to uphold. The reputation of being able bodied and perfectly capable, the role i play daily, like a tired actor on stage performing for the hundredth time. 

It’s tiring in itself, keeping up this facade. 

I make myself palatable, i swallow down the pain, the truth of what i face. 

I put on a mask to make myself more appealing. After all, the last thing i want to be is a burden. 

But I’m watching myself decay in real time.

I can only hope it eases soon, but my hope is also decaying away day by day.