A Note to a Friend

 My overall reaction to my trip to see you last week is centered around the fact that you moved from your bed to my car to the restaurant and back again.  You had said how tired and lethargic you were when we have "talked" by e-mail, but to observe your lack of energy showed me how devastating and debilitating it has become for you.

Yep, bed…that’s pretty much where I’ve lived for the last 14 months.  I get up to go to coffee or the doctor or to drive the kids to something and go right back to laying on the bed.  Even hanging out on the couch has become too much since I have to argue for the space where I can stretch out and rest my head, fight with the family over light/noise/choice of television programming/clutter/dust-pet-hair, and so on.  My bed has become my sanctuary and my prison. 

My internet connection is my window to the world; Facebook is my social arena.  I can choose when and how I converse or if. When it gets too much, I can just not participate and it’s okay. For a month or so in January/February, I had a few really marvelous weeks when I was able to shop and cook and feel like a real human being not just play one on the internet.  But then in March I had some psychological stuff happen in an NAET session that really walloped me and it has been a loooong slow road back again.  In just about every possible way, I feel as sick as I was in December.  And that was really bad! 

 I pray you will find whatever it is—physically, psychologically, spiritually—that is getting the best of you; or that with or without that knowledge, you will find the means (homeopathic or otherwise, by yourself or with the help of professionals) to overcome what's been ailing you.  I sense that there must be an answer to this thing, and that you or someone else will be able to find it.  (Whatever you do, don't give up.) 

My healing partner says I can’t give up—as in suicide—because the curse of my condition is that it would take more energy than I have to kill myself.  Sigh.  Yeah.   More often than I can count, I’ve prayed for the energy to die.  Because living so isolated from anyone who actually believes I am sick and not just lazy crazy or stupid, so incapable of doing anything that makes me feel alive, so fucking tired in body, mind, and spirit, is not a life worth living. 

I know I have a purpose, a mission from God, but I feel much like Moses.  …it was Moses? Not Aaron?  Who had the speech impediment and felt unqualified to speak for God?  … I have this mission, and I even know what it is, but my self understanding is so lame, I cannot (will not) see that I can do the work.  And the harder I try, the less I can do.  My brain simply stalls as soon as I begin to think maybe I can do this. 

And, sure, there is that faith thing. If God has given you a task, he will surely equip you for it, right? So I must simply be faithful to the mission, fidelity is everything.  Except I can’t.  I literally lay here with my fingers poised over the keyboard and my mind freezes up—I can’t remember a single thing to write, I lose my words so badly I can’t complete a sentence even when I can remember my theme. Or I simply wear out and can’t even muster the physical energy to pull the laptop open on my belly here in bed.  

Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.