I had a strange dream last night in which glaciers were beginning to form all around New York and I could see the ice getting higher and higher, climbing ever closer to my apartment window, which meant that I'd soon be encased in ice. I knew that my car was parked on higher ground, but I couldn't find it anywhere, which meant that I couldn't flee the city and that I'd soon lose everything.

I suppose that's what my life feels like, that my world is getting smaller and smaller, and ever the more dangerous, as this pain drags on, offering little hope that I can ever flee to a better place. That's the thing with pain. You can't decide to just take a break from it. In fact, you basically lose all control over your own circumstances, and your decisions are no longer yours, just like any catastrophe, like a new ice age, where everything you've ever done will be devoured and destroyed, and all you're left with is yourself in your own skin, wondering how you'll ever navigate is this unsettling new world, where all rules of society and civility will have to be rewritten.

In the dream, I remember looking at my paintings on my walls, wondering if I could take them with me, as I knew if I'd left them, they'd be destroyed by the water and ice. I realized that there were just too many and so they'd have to be left behind, and it made me sad to think that so little would be left of me, so few remnants to remind anyone that I was ever here.

That's what my life feels like right now, as I find that I'm just sleeping the days away. My mom suggested that I maybe go back on antidepressants, but they never really lifted the sadness over the shrinking contours of my life. After awhile, they were just another drug in my system, and the point lately is to get the chemicals out, to get back to something I've been reaching for ever since this all began--back to a lightness of being, back to a happier state, back to hope.

As I sit here writing, my body feels like a ten-ton weight, and I'm not even sure what I want to say, other than these periods of extreme heaviness seem to crush all motivation to do anything useful or fun. At times, they can lift somewhat, and I can make my way to the gym, or spend time with family and friends, but today, everything is just getting smaller and smaller, as the ice and water get ever closer to encasing me for good. It's days like this that the will to go on wavers, as when I look ahead, I just don't see any solutions.

I am going to a new doctor, who has me on a nutrition regimen that is supposed to reduce acidity in the body (as acidity is supposedly a huge coponent of chronic pain), and I've spoken with my previous oral surgeon about possibly trying surgery again. But I'm so at the end of my rope. I'm not sure I could withstand any more disappointments. But I'm not sure how much longer of this I can stand either.

My friend Lynda theorized yesterday during her visit that these new supplements are perhaps detoxing my body, which may account for the sluggishness, and surely there's a lot to detox. These daily doses of morphine can't be good for my health, and I sometimes think of just going to a drug detox center to see what will happen, to see if I can stand the pain without all the drugs. But that requires making a plan, something I can't stand to think about at the moment.

I suppose what makes me the most sad is that my life has come to feel like such a waste. It's a waste in terms of any good that I could be contributing to the world, and a waste for me personally, as it's become nothing more, it seems, than a study in endurance.

Sometimes I've thought of turning these writings into a book of essays about a life in chronic pain, but along the way, I've always hoped that I'd have something inspirational to offer--that I'd land on some softer sand, which could maybe be a map for others as to how they could better cope with the unthinkable.

But here I am, over two years later, with little more to offer than when I started. It seems that for some, cruel twists of fate stay cruel, and I've no explanation for it, no words of wisdom, no path leading the way out. It's a mean existence for sure, and the day may come when I just won't want to do it anymore. I hope those who love me will be able to forgive me.


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