Chronic Illness

My forties are likely defined by it: bloating, burping, nausea, and other details of which I will spare you. I no longer eat dairy, gluten, garlic, onion, chocolate, more than half the world's fruits and vegetables, and every restaurant outing is a gamble that can lead to two weeks' illness. Whatever mental capacity I had to concentrate, to work hard, is pretty well gone. Concentration on mental problems becomes minimal. The ability to be spontaneously facile with words begins to dry up, along with the ability to write more than one essay a week. The concentration for reading can feel colossal and comprehension is certainly not what it was. Travel? Well, one can only pray that eventually you...

It's the result of a twenties and thirties of ravenous appetites. One mood medication induced a massive appetite for food, another slowed my colon like a tortoise. I knew the inevitable result would be something like this or still worse, yet I felt completely powerless to stop. I take the most minimal amount now of the former medication, but for the latter there is no antidepressant that will not induce something similar, and potentially a bit worse.

The kingdom of the perpetually mad is a tough enough place, but to be a dual citizen with the kingdom of the perpetually sick is another level of madness. To bear it forces you, however mad, to find strength you didn't know you had as you descend into still new realms of suffering.

And yet the perspective one gains is helpful as well. It instills a new hunger to discover those available bits of life. The concentration on the physical means that there is less mental energy that feeds into mental suffering. Physical suffering forces you to hope in precisely the way that mental suffering takes hope away from you. The two become locked in a battle and one begins to realize that hope is not a state so much as a practice. If one 'performs' hope enough, one can convince oneself to become the performance.

A conclusion later, if I can concentrate...All reactions