The Unused Walking Stick

One of my best friends, Oh-Beautiful-and-Gorgeous-One-Who-Makes-Me-Burn-In-Loving-Envy (for short, we'll call her Paint Lady), constantly seems to be coming up with ways to make me difficult. Not like it's hard- I can be a difficult person.. but still.

I'm stage two cancer. I've been through two invasive surgeries so far and we're working on scheduling a third after this round of treatment, depending on how it turns out. I'm getting therapy twice a week intravenously- it's pretty much exhausting. I'm working multiple jobs. Any working day under 16 hours is a good, short day in my life. I recently moved into a two bedroom apartment on the fourth floor; the only way to get to it is up floor flights of stairs outside. Each flight is eight steps, and there's a little landing inbetween each one. Under normal circumstances, it's not bad at all unless you're moving furniture and stuff. Then it sucks monkey ass. But really, my life right now is nowhere close to normal. To top it off, I haven't had a real Shabbat in FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND ever. I DID get to finally go get my Shabbat candles from Howler's place the other day, though. So at least now, the potential for a full-fledged Shabbat is there. =)

Anyway, as if it's not hard enough without teasing, loving or not, everybody seems to feel the need to make me the object of joking sympathy...>_<...

Last week Paint Lady's husband, Oh Ostrich Rider, gave me a walking stick.

Oy.

So all week, I've been struggling to get up those stairs after 18 hour days chock-full of abused kids, teasing surrogate family, fighting family, majorly confuddled hottie (Water Boy), not so confuddled but still confuddled other hottie (Howler), and all of the other people that make my life what it is- hard. (Have I mentioned that I'm WAY too young for all of this crap? Someone is DEF out to get me. >.<) I finally get inside my apartment, start dropping my clothes as I walk and eventually fall, mostly naked, onto my mediocre bed. And on the nights when I can close my eyes without images from my past or the traumatized and bleeding present of the little ones I work with, I get a small taste of Heaven: sleep. Just sleep.. Dreamless oblivion. And for a while I can forget everything; I can stop thinking and rationalizing and plotting and fearing and dreading and fighting and just exist- or not exist- in my mind.

And then I wake up.

....Whoever said that thing about too much of a good thing was a fucking idiot.

And I turn my head and what do I see? That walking stick propped up in the corner of my room. And it takes an immense amount of will power to get out of bed and turn away from that, to not take the easy road. Because whether or not anyone else understands that small decision and it's major implications in my life, I do. And that's enough. And each day I get up knowing that it's going to be so full of pain and suffering and doubts and fears, both mine and others'.. and I get up anyway. And I put on my clothes and I look at myself in the mirror, and I tell myself, "Just today. Think of today, just today, and you can do this". Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm not, but everyday I walk out of that apartment and I go to those traumatized and bleeding children and I leave that unused walking stick behind.