Bottoming out.

As I sit here, at the moment, I am overcome with a sense of absolute numbness. I am dumbfounded by the sheer enormity of my human dilemma. I feel as though I am being tested by God. How do I even begin to describe the feeling of complete and utter powerlessness I feel? It is indescribable. I look around my life, a life that I continue to be told I should be grateful for, and yet I have to fight every step of the way to believe even an iota of that concept. How can I share the contents of my mind and my soul? How do I touch the skin of what it means to suffer to the degree that I do? Am I addicted to this condition? Or am I touched by it and hence am merely trying to survive it? Is this a human problem or a personal one?

These are necessary questions as I attempt to come to terms with the inestimable disappointment that I call my life. A dissapointment not for what I have yet to accomplish, or perhaps never will, but a disappointment in the absolute sense of the imeasurable quality of endurance that one needs to contain the level of suffering I experience daily. This is not a relative term. My situation is unique to me and yet the human element remains constant. I in no way mean to denigrate another's journey to the soul. But I am simply stunned at the level of pain that I continue to encounter. Pain caused by a myriad of sources: refusal to accept what is, physical pain caused by recurrent sores and infections, constant disappointments at who I am or should become (psychic), more physical distress caused by the stress of other people, the abnegation of my ego or personality into a universal principal that I find hostile, the black emptiness of lonley isolation from a lover, the terrible fears of loss and the life long grief that will always be present, even as time heals all wounds. Having to disappear completely whether through death or personality destruction. And, of course, leaving me behind here.

I am most immediately troubled by the chronic nature of my ever increasing, ever burdensome physcial problems. While not in the same league with the severities of others I know, it still is my personal burden and, as such, it constitutes a need to adapt to a life of constant medical care. This is something I could not have imagined at my rather young age (45) a mere ten years ago. But, alas, the problems continue to grow. If it is not strange viruses or bacterium, it is gastrointestinal issues, or pharmeceutical care that is chronic. The extraordinary amount of antibiotics I have ingested this year alone is staggering.

Let us not speak of my financial affairs. Continually dismal, to say the least. Or my lost sense of personal identity as a Jew. I am seeking a resurrection in that arena. My tortuous relationship with a baseball team that savages me nightly, and my inchoate diatribes of the mind. The inssuferable, nauseating thoughts which run rampant without recourse to relief.

I am sober, thank God. But whose God am I to thank? I follow the instructions of others, but which others do I follow? I believe you when you like me, or when I win or you win and I win through you. But I wonder, do I believe me? Do I trust and respect me? How do I let Go and let God? You say, just let it go, like a piece of hot coal, and then you sell millions of books with that line.

Angry? No, not at all. Just amazed. Simply amazed.