Old Unreliable

“I planned on coming here to tell you that you’ll always come first, but the truth is, that’s not a promise I can keep…But the one thing I can guarantee you, is that when it’s my decision, I’ll always choose you…But if that’s not enough, I understand.” –Eliot, from the TV show, Scrubs

I am the least reliable person I know, because of my health, yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that I hate not being able to promise anyone anything. It’s one thing if you are a doctor, you almost have a choice, but to have Stills Disease thrust upon you, stealing your ability to be there when someone wants you to or needs you to…I hate it.

What is worse, is that when I finally have a “good” day, do you know what I do with it? Do I spend all day catching up with the ones I’ve been too sick to keep in contact with? No. I don’t. I spend the day doing something I’ve been dying to do for weeks or months: go for a drive, write, something just for me. It disgusts me that I do this every single time, and yet…

I honestly don’t think I could change this, and I honestly think you would do the same exact thing as me if you had chronic pain, chronic fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and were housebound 350 days a year. If you wouldn’t…you are a rare and impressive breed and you have to tell me how you do it.

I want to be there for the people I love. I pray for that daily. To be able to do something, anything, to show them and tell them how much I love them, no matter how much Stills Disease tries to convince them otherwise. And I do try really hard to do that.

Just because I have all this Time on my hands, that does not--does not--mean that I have energy to do something with the Time I have been burdened with—I mean given.

If I can’t even get out of the house to go somewhere that isn’t a doctor’s office, how am I going to be there for the ones I love? I don’t know.

I just pray and pray they know in their hearts, not just their minds, that it is Stills Disease keeping me from them, not myself. That they know in their hearts how much I want to promise they will come first, but that Stills Disease prevents me from doing so. That they know how much I want to put them first, before my health, but that I can’t. That they know I will force my mind to understand if that is not enough for them, but that my heart tells me something else entirely. And that this kind of pain outweighs any and all the physical pain I will feel in any given day.