The Evils Of The Day . . .

I don’t know how long I have left – months, years….. I don’t think my alternative medicine regime is tolerable to those around me. I get the feeling that it is just an irritation and a distraction. I feel as if I am a burden. I am not as available as I would like to be. I think perhaps I need to not be a burden to everyone and just accept Fate as She lays down her cards. Where ever they fall, let them fall. With no chemo, no steroids, and no alternative treatment, things look pretty bleak, but I will NOT go out that way. I would do all of those things for a cure, but not for management and time. The side effects were too outrageously bad for me. At least I know how I will go: a heart attack, lung failure, in pain from the inflammatory arthritis. I am already breathless and have chest pain. I have had the chest pain for quite a while now. It was misdiagnosed at the end of last year as costochondritis. As always women are dismissed with accusations of hysteria, mental illness and hypochondria. Finally the doctors put a label on my illness and cemented my fate. I think while I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I might have had a chance of denial, but that refuge gets further and further away by the day. I can’t deny there is something terribly wrong.

I had one heck of a day yesterday. Abusive messages were sent to my blog because I was bullied on Twitter for calling out abuse towards a woman and called it what it was. Twitter is a dumpster fire of bullying, abuse, right wing hate-mongers and spammers/Bots. It is a far-right infested pit, and nothing would give me more pleasure right now than seeing it all crash and burn. I even paid for twitter blue for a month to try and promote my writing, but it was so vile and cruel, like that infamous numerical chan place only with a veneer of civility and the illusion of decency. It brought such shit to my door, that I bailed after only five or so days. Between the antisemitic Bassist Debacle and this piece of shit with the latest nastiness I have had enough of men, particularly powerful men with a platform that they use to spread hate and horror. Pigs (almost) all of them.

So I left social media, deciding that it was not worth the stress, and anyway, my dreams of literary fortune have evaporated in the cold harsh light of this illness. I am proud of a good proportion of this blog. I kind of hope after I die that someone keeps it up and keeps it online and keeps my voice alive and perhaps I’ll be recognized after I die as someone who wrote things worth reading. It would just be my luck that I get fame and fortune once I am in the grave! Just like me. Too little, too late. Too much every fucking day.

It is the season of June Gloom in San Francisco. This last year has been freezing cold. It is not helping anything. I want some warmth on my bones. I have no idea how it can be June already. Months fly past. I long for the past. I want to live there permanently. Maybe I will get you soon.

As a side effect from my attempts to control the disease alternatively I have a small case of synesthesia. I can taste words and memories. It is not too extreme, just a combination of irritating and awesome. Bomb tastes like tar and charcoal. I can literally smell and taste the rain on a wet parking lot on a Minnesota afternoon. I can smell my newborn babies in my arms as I rock them. Books taste like ice cream cone wafers with a hint of ink. Other words taste like artificial flavors – banana, strawberry from the depths of the chemist’s laboratory. Very off-putting.

I have got a parade of medical appointments at the end of the week. I can’t face them but I have to go. This whole mess is making me sad. I just need a quiet week. A quiet month. A quiet life.