fuck, even all the quotes I want to use are wretched

 So, I had the knee surgery last Tuesday.  It's been a journey.

 

I think I might have fucked myself over in the recovery room when I rated the pain at a 5 or a 6, because when I got home and into bed and the nerve block started to wear off, it was possibly in my top three worst pain I've experienced moments and while I'm not sure I can imagine what would make me say 10, I can say without question it was in the 8-9 range, and I'm only saying top three to hedge my bets and account for the mercy of the passing of time having maybe dulled past experience.  I'm still pretty sure it was the worst.    There was a lot of panting and whimpering and some occasional strangled screaming.  A lot more of the internal "i can't do this and it doesn't matter if I can't" thoughts that had preceded surgery, and even some external "i can't do this" with a couple explicitly voiced thoughts about preferring to be dead than to be experiencing this. As I eventually told Light, while all too familiar with being in enough emotional pain that I wanted to die, I don't actually remember being in enough physical pain that I wanted to die before last week. 

 

Eventually, we got in touch with the doctor who switched me from hydrocodone to oxy and the rhetoric toned down a bit, and I tried to get Abundance to explain to me why getting the surgery wasn't a mistake.  It helped in the moment, but unfortunately that moment passed and I'm back to thinking of it as just an irrevocable bad idea, but more on that in a bit. I also learned that you can have a rebound from a nerve block, which is why the hydrocodone wasn't touching the pain.    I'm off the oxy now, down to ibuprofen, tylenol and a whole lot of icing and elevating.   But fuck if I don't want the oxy back.  

 

The fancy bed I set up in my own room, with the tilting and the nearby creature comforts ended up being too high and the process of trying to get into it too excruciating, so I've moved into Abundance's room, and he is being a fucking rockstar about it, but sometimes I kick him out to go sleep in the fancy bed because the only thing I can imagine distracting me is straight up computer games (a little higher engagement than tablet games, a little lower focus than reading).   Except I'm struggling with doing that as well, so sometimes it's just sobbing and tablet games that can't hold my attention either. 

 

I still can't really get out of or back into bed without assistance, though every day I'm probably closer to being physically able to do it, if everything is pre-arranged where I can reach brace, crutch, everything is out of my way and all relevant doors are open.    By which I mean, I can almost get to the bathroom myself.   Downstairs is 100% out of the question, I can bump up and down the stairs on my butt, or have twice in order to get to PT, but on the way back inside yesterday, I ended up propping myself up on crutches to cry while standing on the lawn because I was too terrified of the two stairs I needed to get up  to get into the house.  Turns out, even if I'm getting lightly better with crutches on the level, (though I still sometimes try too hard to hurry when someone's waiting for me) I still can't figure out stairs or am just so tragically bad at hopping that they're nigh impossible.  In other things I can't do for/by myself, I've settled on showering every other day and just feeling gross for much of the time in between. I suspect the sense of cleanliness runs out faster while stuck in bed.  

 

A lot of the things I've set up for myself to do to distract myself just aren't working. Too much sitting up, too much concentration, requiring too much absence-of-sadness.  I'm crying a lot, and spiraling the fuck out, and desperately wish at this point I'd chosen a handful of years of chronic pain followed by a knee replacement than this helplessness.  I'm finding it almost impossible to have to ask either Abundance or Light for food or help to the bathroom or reaching things. I don't want hovering, but maybe I do, and everything else feels like being abandoned or forgotten.  I don't want to inconvenience anyone, and it feels better not to do things than to ask for help doing them, but then I'm just lying in bed and my brain is eating itself and I still need to pee.  This morning I got to the point where I finally was hungry enough to ask someone to bring me food, and then couldn't eat it because every time I tried, I just burst into tears because it was pointing out how helpless I was.  

 

All of my feelings about bed rest are getting intertwined with all my fucked up fears about Abundance dating, all the feelings of being left, all the feelings about other people who can do things I can't, all the feelings about people who come with their factory parts, none of these are being in any way aided by the fact that I can't get out of bed, can't even properly snuggle.   I can't even articulate what it is I'm afraid of, only that I'm afraid of something and that it's a something I feel like Abundance is either doing or about to do.  I'm guessing it's a fear of being left, but that feels incomplete or like it's missing most of the point, it's not like being left isn't always an option.  I'm afraid that my inability to control my fear is going to make all the things I'm afraid of happen, even though I still don't know what they are and I so I end up wondering which sinks a relationship first, crying all the time, or pretending I'm fine when I'm not.  

 

I know this is despair, this feeling of nothing ever being better than this, that there's only harder things to do from here on out.  This feeling like I have to figure out what the bearable amount of shattered is and try to expand it to cover the things that Abundance needs to live his best life, because I can't figure out how to un-shatter.  This feeling like I've fucked everything up in so, so many ways.   I know that it's despair that tells me I'm bumping up against the maximum number of days of my life where make it to noon, make it to midnight is going to work.    I know that it's despair that makes me afraid of the things I'm doing, the things I've done or the things I'm about to do. 

 

And though I don't ascribe agency to the universe, and it feels like cruelty requires an actor, it's extra cruel that knowing that it's despair doesn't actually make any room for hope, knowing that it's despair just means it's another way I'm failing to function.