"How are you?"

Since surgery on 8/30/16,
I have been quite isolated.
I still am,
though I am now able to get out of the house on some days.

Other days it takes all my effort to just get out of bed,
much less get dressed.
Thinking and conversing on those days is difficult;
cognitive energy goes into performing simple daily tasks.
Socializing takes lots of effort,
and then I end up...
isolated.

Most days I have to gauge where and how to "spend" my energy,
("spend" in quotes,
because I prefer thinking of energy as more like time,
more like a state of being,
rather than a commodity,
even though it is a "commodity").
I know everyone has to do this.
But it is more complex when a person lives with chronic pain/illness/disability.

Since my surgery
I have suffered deep depression and intense anxiety,
along with insomnia.
I have had some good days.
But most have been rough.
My days pre-surgery were rough enough.

Since living with nerve damage
(which started in Spring, 2011),
I often find it difficult to answer the question,
"How are you?"

If I'm suffering and the question is from a close friend,
I usually let on.
"I'm miserable,"
or "I'm having a shitty day,"
or something to that effect.

If I'm suffering and the person asking is more of an acquaintance than a close friend,
I typically respond,
"I'm hanging in there."
Sometimes I respond that way with my close friends.
It's such a drag to always hear,
"I'm struggling."

But every day I struggle.
And more so since surgery.

In the past few months, I've been journaling mostly with pen and paper.

I wrote a a few CBT thought-records,
due to my high anxiety.

I journaled explosive rants,
sometimes in LARGE ALL CAPS.
I chiseled scratch-marks diagonally across whole pages of my journal.
Not literally chiseled,
but that's how I felt.

And I journaled some "good" things too,
("good" in quotes,
because I don't like thinking of life as "good" or "bad,"
but rather,
that life simply is,
even though it is "good" and "bad"),
like what I accomplished on a given day
or what I have to be thankful for.

I got maybe one working poem out of my past-few-months scribblings.
Now,
maybe two.

~*~

Well, this mini-ramble has ended up differently than I was thinking.
I thought I was going to write about my social media history and the whys behind my involvement and then dis-involvement.
Maybe later.

~*~