I don't like these posts. These, "Oops, I did it again," posts. These admission of guilt posts. These I'm-in-trouble-again-and-can't-get-myself-out posts. Like them or not, reality is undeniable. Bear with me as I do my best to express myself and my position.
My body is so sensitive at this point, so fragile and delicate, that I think sometimes it will simply crumble to dust. I haven't done some terrific, dramatic swan-dive into relapse, but I have made some poor choices. A younger person (says the geriatric 28-year old), a person who hasn't been ill for a decade and a half, a person walking around with a strong body, would be able to weather these behaviors pretty well. Bounce back from them easily, with the proper effort. My body, though, is simply conditioned to be ill; by this point, if I miss breakfast my physiology reacts as if I've been starving for months. Miss breakfast a few times, and things look pretty grim.
My heart, which has had its share of difficulties, showed an alarming new complication on an EKG this week. The kind of complication that makes even the most hardened minimizer (like myself) sit up and say, "Oh, shit." In addition, I had to go to the emergency room yesterday for tightness in the chest, which turned out to be spasms in my lungs. Didn't know my lungs were unhappy with me; guess they felt left out. These symptoms, added to the already complicated constellation of bodily woes, leave me with one clear choice: Go back into treatment for medical stabilization, or walk around with a grenade in my pocket hoping for the best.
It seems rather cut and dry, doesn't it? Go into the hospital to save your life, or stay home and gamble with it. Here's the rub: a cunning little voice inside my head keeps whispering, "You've got no chance. You can't get better. You've tried over and over, fought tooth and nail, and here you are again. Your body's too wounded, you've been sick for too long, don't even bother." That voice is called Hopelessness, and as I said to a dear friend last night, hopelessness is fatal. Even in the absence of confidence, even when the cards are stacked against me, even when all past evidence points to failure, I must not give up hope.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." -Proverbs 13:12. My heart is sick indeed, and the tree of life is located on a hill in Wickenburg, AZ. Your support, your overwhelming love and encouragement, and most of all your hope, means the world to me. I will be gone for about a month, from 3/16 through mid-April. Please keep my family and me in your prayers.
