Getting in touch with my inner Eeyore

I didn't write last week because I had nothing to say. I don't have much to say this week, either, but I don't want to get out of the habit of writing or this will end up being one of those ghostly blogs cluttering up cyberspace, and we can't have that, can we?

The update on the Interferon is that I've passed 24 weeks, which, had my virus behaved itself, would mark the halfway point, but since it took its sweet time going away, I've got three weeks to go before I'm halfway. The good news is that my viral load is still negative and my red and white counts are "holding their own," according to Judy. They're both still low, but they're not so low that we need to do anything drastic. Apart from the insomnia, which probably won't go away until the treatment is over, I haven't had any side effects in the last two weeks. I haven't even filled the prescription Dr H gave me for an inhaler because my lungs have been fine. The weather changed from chilly and overcast to sunny and ninety degrees every day, which may have something to do with that. The only unusual thing I've noticed is occasional aching and stiffness in my bones and muscles, like I'm about to get sick. It happens for a day or two, usually later in the week, five or six days after I do my shot, and then it goes away. I asked Judy about it and she said it might be a side effect. Well, that's good to know. If it's a side effect, that's fine. It's not anything I can't live with. But if it's not a side effect, then I'd like to know what it is. I suppose I'll find out next year, when the treatment is over. If it never happens again, I'll know it was a side effect.

Apart from that, I'm in something of a lull. No emotional or spiritual upheaval, no drama, nothing interesting going on in my life or in my mind. I'm a bit bored. I have no friends, nothing to compensate me for the tedium and drudgery of my job and the crushing poverty I can't seem to get out from under.

I don't want to complain. It does no good and it just makes me feel worse in the end. But the only thing that keeps me going is the thought that things will change soon, that I won't have to endure the poverty, the drudgery and the loneliness for very much longer. The problem is that I'm losing hope. Nothing has changed and nothing looks likely to change. From where I sit I see a dreary vista of more of the same stretching off into infinity. I'll spend the next two years toiling away at a job I hate for the privilege of paying off my car, and another year saving enough money to move someplace cheaper, all so that I can start all over, again, at the age of 47.

I can't do this a day at a time for the next thirty or forty years. Something has got to change. I've been in this rut for the last seven years, ever since my sponsor relapsed and our tight little circle broke up. I've been alone and bored and poor. I've been alone even when I wasn't: the last boyfriend I had taught me that being with someone just because he likes me is lonelier than being alone.

If I had a friend I think I could endure the rest of it. I sat at a meeting a couple of weeks ago in which the topic was gratitude, and as I listened to my fellow members talk about the things they were grateful for, I felt increasingly alone and different. They all have problems, of course, but not in all of the big areas of their lives, not all at once. Not when they have ten years clean, at any rate. They're grateful for their families, for the jobs they have that they love, for their friends and the fun things they do with the people they love. I haven't got any of those things. It seems to me that if I could get relief in just one of the three problem areas of my life I would feel less despair and more hope. A friend makes up for a lot of lack.

But I don't have a friend. I don't have anyone to matter to. If I want to go downtown and go window shopping, I have to go by myself because there's no one in my life I can call and invite to go with me. Yes, I have "friends," but they're more like acquaintances. If I want to do something with any of them I have to make an appointment three weeks in advance. I have no one to be spontaneous with, no one to hang out with and watch movies or go for a walk or meet for coffee.

There's something to be said, of course, for living a day at a time, but the days tend to pile up behind a person. Spending years plodding through my days just in order to meet the bare minimum of requirements for life is not living. It's existing. I've got ten years clean and I haven't got a life. It must be my fault, but I don't know what more I can do. I've been trying to change things for the last six years, to no avail. I've asked my higher power to point me toward what I want, and since I'm still here, maybe this is what I want. I don't know. I'm not making any decisions right now because I know the Interferon affects my mood, but my feeling is that if I hit fifty and nothing has changed, I don't see any point in sticking around any longer. Why should I shuffle into old age and infirmity, alone and poor, if I don't have to? With no safety net -- no retirement plan, no spouse, no children, nothing to cushion me -- all I would have to look forward to would be pushing a shopping cart around and eating dog food, talking to myself because I have no one else to talk to. I don't want to be the crazy cat lady.

I just made myself laugh, so perhaps there's hope for me yet.