Effect Essay - #6
I’m coming back around to me a little. It’s slow and I’m certainly not saying that I’m at 100% peak efficiency physically, but I am feeling much better and am getting a handle on my ailment - not a minute too soon and, hopefully, not a minute too late either. A lot has suffered in these last weeks. I’ve learned first-hand the devastation that a debilitating illness can wreck on a life. The emotional, physical and psychological effects can leave a path of destruction before one even realizes that it’s happening.
The emotional effects are none too subtle. My feelings lately have been raw and achy. I feel like a loser for not being able to control the symptoms enough to manage any semblance of a normal life. I feel guilty about all of the things that I’ve not been able to do and I feel weak when I compare my own illness to those of a more serious nature. All of these feelings bring on stress which exasperates the emotions which leads to more guilt and anguish. I spent hours crying on the couch in the middle of the night alternating between feeling sorry for myself and feeling disgusted with my self pity.
Physically, I’m exhausted. Between the lack of sleep and the terrible cramping and bloating my body feels beaten and a waste. I’ve tried catching up on my sleep but there’s so much to be done. There’s so much that I had to put off that I can’t afford to sleep when I know that I should. My skin is different. It seems older and depleted of its vitamins. It’s the same with my hair. My body hardly seems recognizable to my own eyes which have dark circles shadowing them. I’ve neglected doing anything that I used to do for me. No walks, no long showers, no exercising except the movement between the couch and the bathroom. Physically, I feel like one of Hagen’s train wrecks.
Psychologically, I am changed by the whole experience. It’s brought home to me the inevitably of the body’s breakdown. Intellectually, I know that I’ve a lot of years left to me but those years are going to be different years than the ones that came before. Things that I didn’t worry over now have to be considered carefully. My diet has to change, my habits, my vices all have to be reconsidered and redesigned. I also have to think about my family in a different way. I actually went online and looked at a life insurance policy. I suppose that as a mother I should have taken care of that before now but I just didn’t think about it really. At least I didn’t think about it as being immediate. It’s taken on a new sort of urgency, which depresses me a little, I’ll admit.
I am a different woman because of the last few weeks. I haven’t assimilated all of the new emotions. My body hasn’t recuperated completely from its battle and the psychology that I “run” on is in the process of being reformed leaving me at a loss for the moment. I feel certain that I’ll grow just fine through this stage in my life and understanding and I feel truly lucky that I’ve not had to deal with the implications of a more serious disease. Still, I am a different woman – my definition as yet, undiscovered.
The emotional effects are none too subtle. My feelings lately have been raw and achy. I feel like a loser for not being able to control the symptoms enough to manage any semblance of a normal life. I feel guilty about all of the things that I’ve not been able to do and I feel weak when I compare my own illness to those of a more serious nature. All of these feelings bring on stress which exasperates the emotions which leads to more guilt and anguish. I spent hours crying on the couch in the middle of the night alternating between feeling sorry for myself and feeling disgusted with my self pity.
Physically, I’m exhausted. Between the lack of sleep and the terrible cramping and bloating my body feels beaten and a waste. I’ve tried catching up on my sleep but there’s so much to be done. There’s so much that I had to put off that I can’t afford to sleep when I know that I should. My skin is different. It seems older and depleted of its vitamins. It’s the same with my hair. My body hardly seems recognizable to my own eyes which have dark circles shadowing them. I’ve neglected doing anything that I used to do for me. No walks, no long showers, no exercising except the movement between the couch and the bathroom. Physically, I feel like one of Hagen’s train wrecks.
Psychologically, I am changed by the whole experience. It’s brought home to me the inevitably of the body’s breakdown. Intellectually, I know that I’ve a lot of years left to me but those years are going to be different years than the ones that came before. Things that I didn’t worry over now have to be considered carefully. My diet has to change, my habits, my vices all have to be reconsidered and redesigned. I also have to think about my family in a different way. I actually went online and looked at a life insurance policy. I suppose that as a mother I should have taken care of that before now but I just didn’t think about it really. At least I didn’t think about it as being immediate. It’s taken on a new sort of urgency, which depresses me a little, I’ll admit.
I am a different woman because of the last few weeks. I haven’t assimilated all of the new emotions. My body hasn’t recuperated completely from its battle and the psychology that I “run” on is in the process of being reformed leaving me at a loss for the moment. I feel certain that I’ll grow just fine through this stage in my life and understanding and I feel truly lucky that I’ve not had to deal with the implications of a more serious disease. Still, I am a different woman – my definition as yet, undiscovered.
posted by millay at 1:25 AM
1 Comments:
Do you want to be done? If so, I'll take this for its organization and clarity.
Or do you want to be, do you have the energy right now to be, better? If so, look at the material you did as a freestyle, I think, on IBS and see what you can steal from that. I realize the tone of that is lighter than this, but still...this needs a little of that kind of specificity.
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