Pardon this digression from book discussions, et. al. Today I’m talking about The Good Days and why I am coming to hate them.
Today is not a good day. Today follows hard on the heels of yesterday and last night, both of which were lived around pain that set my mind screaming. (I’ve gotten very adept at screaming only internally. It works for me at all times other than when I’m seeing a doctor. At that point I come off as better than I am because I have the practised stoicism of the person who was raised to not speak out of turn in class. I know how to keep my mouth shut.) Today I’m full of pain and chemotherapy designed to keep me from being in more pain later on. No. It’s not a good day.
But there are good days where I feel normal. I feel well, creative and competent. I feel like I’ve not got anything wrong with me.
On the good days I often find myself thinking that I’m malingering and that I’ve blown this whole “illness” thing way out of proportion. So I’ll make plans, accept job offers and begin projects. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the idea that I am not really sick or that one day I’ll not be sick anymore and things will go on as I had fantasized. On the good days I often think my bad-days self is a weaksauce sister who needs to just grow a pair.
I strongly suspect that most people I know agree with my Good Days’ persona’s assessment of myself. And I understand why they’d think that way because I think that way about myself. “Oh, shut up. It can’t be that bad. You’re being dramatic. Etc.”
Then the bad days come. This one started Sunday evening when I ended up having to pull off all my clothes and lay whimpering under the sheet. When I start to flare up it hurts to have things binding, pressing on nerves and tumors and scar tissue that all press on other nerves. Nudity is the only option. So I’ll lie there under the sheet and watch the ceiling fan rotate while I try to focus my mind on a plane that doesn’t have physical limitations and think to myself just how much I hate the Good Days and just how bad the Good Days really are. Because they’re the lie–this idea that I’m fine and okay and don’t need help.
You know, I honestly did NOT think of this when I started writing this post but it came to me in the middle of typing that paragraph there that this is as good an explanation for my Christianity as anything else. Because while I have those isolated days where I can convince myself that I’m a good person and everything’s going ok the reality is that those are a myth and the truth is that I am broken and badly in need of repair. So my body has pills and my soul has Christ and when I strip naked before the Cross in the full realilsation of just exactly what I am I know that my body will eventually travel to that plane that doesn’t have physical limitations.
Can SO relate. When I have good days, I feel like I’m being a wimp on the bad days. Why is that, I wonder? I am hoping for some help from my rheumatologist tomorrow, maybe to have him tell me that it’s NOT all in my head like it feels sometimes. I’d really just like a diagnosis, though.
Katherine, your post really hits home. Around our house, we have some familiarity with “good days” and “bad days”. If I were a prayerful person, I would be praying for you right now, with all my heart. I’d pray for a nice string of Good Days for you. And maybe a few for us, too.
I get this. Those good days are so tricky. I’ve had a bad run lately, and I keep thinking, is this all there is to life? Is life just pain? I’m sorry you’ve been going through a bad spell, too, but I’m also thankful that you’re able to see your need for Christ through it all. May God bless you and keep you and strengthen you.
I can’t relate to your level of physical pain but I can relate to feeling normal one day only to fall back into the pit the next. It’s exhausting. I’m sorry you are having to go through it.