Spoonful of sugar…

I never liked taking medicine. There I said it. I feel like … I’m tethered to medicine bottles that drag behind me like the cans on the back of the cars of newly weds. Only I’m hitched to various pharmaceutical companies. I’ve been listening to people whine and complain about freedoms being taken away from them for having to wear a masks and I wonder if they’re attaching some other definition to that word.

Freedom, it seems, is doing whatever you want to do without consequence now.

Freedom is taking for granted that you are even able to do that in the first place.

Freedom is privilege.

In actuality, as put forth by Oxford Languages, freedom is 1) the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. And 2) the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.

Some of us who have to take medicine feel, at some point, that it’s like a ball and chain that we drag around with us. Almost a hindrance to the life we want to live. while others of us feel as though medicines gives the freedom the seek to do the things they want and love to do. This is not so for me. Believe me when I say I hate it.

I hate the feeling of not being okay if I miss a dose. I hate the side effects of some of the stuff I take. And I hate the fact that I am dependent on them. My body acts different if I skip the meds. My mind falls back into darkness without the meds. My emotions … well let’s just say that chaos is an understatement.

My ball and chain that feels like a massive restraint to my person is actually there to help… and I can’t say that it doesn’t, I know it does but I don’t move like I used to.

I eat or drink things and in the back of my mind I wonder, “how is this going to mix with the meds”. Or I limit my activity because I know that while the anti depressants keep me up, the anxiety med brings me down, and the anti-psychotic is supposed to keep me present…I lose something in the process. It feels like a sense of self. You’d think I’d be in a happy medium but I’m not…I usually just feel weird and tired and drained at the thought of doing things since the virus and my medicine is working overtime to keep me well. Yes there’s excitement at some things but I notice it is often short lived. I feel like a Guinea pig with the amount of pills I take day to day.

I feel like I’m no longer free to do all the things I used to do. If not for meds then for body injuries that require more injury to the body to fix. I know some understand what I mean by that. My heart goes out to cancer patients for this reason. They know it a lot more deeply than I do.

These are first world complaints, I know. There are people who need medicine that can’t get them. I understand that too. And I feel empathy in that regard. I want everyone to have what they need when they need it. It’s just for me…. I wonder where I went, ya know? Where’s Ty… the one that had energy and fire, and passion and was to a degree.. fearless?

Is she under a mountain of medicine trying desperately to get to the surface? *shrugs shoulders* I don’t know. Wherever she is, I wish she’d come back. I miss her and her spirit. I miss her laughter and her sense of humor. I miss her curiosity and strength. I just miss her. Quarantine stole so much of her away…looks like it took what was left from the treatments. Where’d you go?

Sometimes I think that if I could purge all of the junk I take, I’d find her. She’d be sitting fairly unscathed beside the mountain of bitter pills, eyes stretched at how much she’s taken over the years. In complete shock that the fog that she lived most of her life in has lifted. Marveling at the fact that she’s not higher than a kite in a tornado. 

Looking for that spoonful of sugar that’s supposed to have me delighted or whatever Mary Poppins said…Something about this gif makes me laugh – Disney thinks they’re slick. Mary Poppins…Poppins! Come on! She was a drug dealer getting little kids high on syrup. And they are all to happy to take it. 

Let me have this chuckle. I know what it is …JUST LET ME HAVE THIS!

So what is meant to be the sugar we take with the medicine? Positive attitude? Laughter? Little anecdotes here and there? Guilty pleasures? A Snickers?

I don’t know. What I do know is sometimes I’d rather not take any of it. I get tired, ya know? And it’s a fatigue that pierces my soul. Yet, I continue because the alternative will leave me hospitalized in one of two places. Don’t want to do either or so I do what I have to do.

Next month I have surgery on my knee. It’s out patient and I’m told it will take 45 minutes but I’d be lying to you if I said I’m not scared. And there will be yet more pills to take in the form of an anti-inflammatory and pain relievers. Yay, drugs! 😑

And this isn’t the big surgery…the knee replacement surgery will be much later, this is just a quick fix so that I can walk with less pain. Why not just do the replacement surgery first? I asked that too and apparently I need to drop some pounds before having the surgery. So yeah there’s that. And it looks like my wish for bionic parts has been granted. But that’s not what is present in my mind right this moment. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about how people went in for simple procedures and…

I know it’s fear talking. Fear has a big mouth and it’s quite disruptive to your common sense and spirit. Truth is, I’ll probably be okay. But the doubts are creeping in. Young I may be but I’m no spring chicken. More like a fall turkey running away from hunters.

*Sigh*… I’ll be okay and if not I’ll make sure my loves know I love them dearly. What else can I do? I’m in Jesus’s ear quite a bit, perhaps more than usual. I’ve had a lot to say as of late and I feel him calming me all the time. He’s even doing it now.

I just have to listen to him. I know he’s the remedy for my poor spirit…I wonder if he’s the sugar too?

What a thought…such a sweet thought.

Be good humans. ❤