I’m right here. You may not notice me anymore, but I am still here.
You may think my smile means something. You may believe me when I say, “I’m fine,” because you want to believe me — and then move on.
What else am I supposed to say? When your body repeatedly falls apart, and there is nothing left to try to stop it, are you going to announce, “I’m desperately ill… again”?
I’ve learned that my reality makes people uncomfortable, because eventually, even compassion has a limit. But it’s still my reality.
My reality is more than you want to know, or maybe more than you can handle knowing. But either way, I’m still here, handling it, because what other choice do I have?
Planning feels pointless when every plan dissolves before my eyes. It’s hard to take action when your body repeatedly, relentlessly lets you down; when illness and medical urgency demand to be heard above all else.
I hold back even on the things I genuinely want to do, not because I don’t care, not because I don’t have desires, but because caring has become exhausting, and hoping has a cost I can no longer pay.
I’ve stopped imagining the future, not because I don’t care, not because I don’t want one, but because I no longer know where I fit inside it. Every time I imagine a life ahead, it crumbles before my eyes, and no amount of work or effort changes that reality.
Hope becomes dangerous. Planning becomes cruel. When every plan is eventually taken from you, what is the point of hoping?
The dreams I held, and still hold, don’t disappear, I just quietly let them go as quickly as they appear. My hand can’t hold the string tight enough, and I watch them, like balloons, disappear into the sky.
They linger as reminders that I am no longer fully living, and yet, I am not dead yet, either. I’m living in the ether of illness. I am slowly becoming a memory; someone old friends check in on once in a while before scurrying on with their real lives, that no longer include me.
Empathy becomes cruel when it is the only pattern left in your life. Sympathy is even crueler.
When your choices are ‘hope and constant disappointment’ or
‘planning for something that will be taken from you and leave you emptier than before’, what do you choose? After a while, you stop choosing at all.
Do you sit and watch the world go by? Do you keep talking about the illnesses that quietly steal your life away? Or do you try to converse, carefully, briefly, until even that becomes too much for others to carry?
After a while, conversation seems useless, too. You stop contacting anyone, and you imagine their great relief. And in many ways, your voice starts to embrace the silence. It’s just easier.
So, I read. I think. I write about things that seem important to fill the minutes and hours that I exist. I tell myself these things matter. And I try to believe it.
Then, even that becomes hollow, because I know, so well, that words are not actions, and the actions are beyond what I can do. Naively, I thought maybe my words would enough, but slowly, relentlessly, I have realized that is not true – at least not for me.
How desperately I want it to be true, how desperately I wanted my written words to become my voice, but desperation does not change reality. Words unread are nothing at all. Words just become something to fill the relentless time that each day takes.
That is the rhythm of my life now. I am a songbird that no longer has a voice. I am an eagle that can no longer soar. I am the broken-down old horse that grazes on a barren field, trudges to a cold stall at night, and searches for a slice of apple in the empty pockets of faceless people I no longer know.
This is nothing like living. I have lived and I remember what it feels like. I remember having a small spark that lit one person’s way. The spark is gone, the way has gone dark, and this is nothing like living.
I am the old dog who waits by the door for an owner that has passed away, and I have no idea – only long, empty, faithful days of waiting for a joyful reunion that will never come.
I’m right here. You may not notice me anymore, but I am still here. Please, someone notice me.
02/01/2025
