I’m not sure why I’m writing this here. Perhaps because ironically I can’t afford a therapist (despite being one) nor the right medical treatment (broken healthcare system). There are no treatments for Gastric Arrythmia. It feels VERY vulnerable to write but desperation does funny things. Namely the fragility of feeling like you are dying or want to die from suffering, knocking off usual filters. I’ve been badly let-down in the past by people I trusted, hence closing ranks over the years. Similarly I have good friends whom I trust & love. Illness can destroy every minute of your life even as you fight against letting it. Gastric Arrythmia in 2017 took 2 whole years of my life before spitting me out incomplete & broken. Since then I’ve had relapses but functioned. In terrible debt/lost job I worked 6/7 days a week to regain life. At times it was horrific. I never thought it would come back as virulent as 2 months ago when it did. Vomiting with highest intractable grade nausea 24/7, everything going through you, no medication; alternative or conventional that works even 10 percent, takes you to a brink you can’t believe. I have thought about dying every single day as a release. You find who cares about you when you get this sick. I can’t ask “why me?” I know so many others who equally suffer. I’m neither strong nor weak. I survive but barely. Eating is impossible, liquid diet, massive weight-loss. The thought of food a demon when extreme nausea is that unrelenting. Nothing works. Thousands spent. Savings obliterated. Jobs lost. Sanity tested. Reaching out for a therapist finding the system too expensive even for that. Losing your mind over-and-over. Isolation, financial ruin & mental. I don’t want pity I want answers. I want it to never return. EIGHT years of this fight but never believed it would return this bad. All caused from a virus in 2017. I don’t know if I will make it this time. I can’t live like this but I do hope it will lessen as it did before enough that I can keep going. My singular regret; not building a family of support for these horrific times. What good can I take from this experience? To help others. As I have always tried to. It’s all I have. I know how bad it can be. You are not alone. Friendship shouldn’t be rare. People shouldn’t be fair-weather. Good people should be the norm. Caring should be free. Selfish people seem to skate above suffering mocking the rest of us.

The girl who had been me

with clean hair, scrubbed face, no idea

mocks in memory these broken shards

in mirror reflection and lake’s succor

all words swallowed in whales wake

useless as hands on a dead person’s chest

will neither resuscitate nor console

those left to be torn in varied hells.

trauma is a vase of white peonies

filling quiet room with dying scent

always strongest at unraveled end

we all find ourselves there eventually

in the thicket of time run terrible thin

traversing regret and terror as

a scold of former indifference

hands raw from choking days

until they become months, years

evaporate against blue-faced tyrant

birthed one innocent day before

war declared herself regent.

some will say give up; drown

beside the loss of hope, an over

watered flower saturated by what nurtures

others speak of courage, strength, endurance

words that have no backbone

in the field where people lie

decomposing in stucco isolation.

I cannot help anyone

though more than anything it has been my wish

to salve the pain I know well and remove

one inch of it from another’s wreckage.

I cannot help myself

watching this body curl into unrecognizable shapes

a fit of suffering like the whiff of poison

quite without smell or taste.

I die standing without shoes

hair shorn and blistered scalp

a madwoman, apparition, poppet

sane as the water from your glass

still they’ll stain me all sorts

such is human penchant for judging

the ones who don’t make the cut.

terror isn’t a film, a book, a statehood

it’s the coil of incurable sickness

binding itself sudden and vicious

cobra and white teeth, dark moon, violet

eclipse regressing in bleed.

I have died in my mind a thousand times

to the drum of this fornicating torment

possessing no release, no answer, not even

the pure bliss of a ten minute pill

no no — hear me? — no no — hear nothing?

lost in scratched out words

regret in speaking at all

silence hangs her veil on every wall

desire once a rich limbed girl

dreaming of eating and kissing and sweat

of a fine languid day

now curled husk

buttoned up in penny coffin

goodbye need not be said

I am neither alive nor dead

such the wake and gorge

of illnesses’ little spoil.

the girl who had been me

stares vacant through silver solidity

where no reflection remains steady

only sound echoing weakly

the cry of someone needing needing needing

what they cannot ever ever

obtain.

An end to pain

the pure filtered light again

sprung from a morning without

this penance claiming

all and all and all till naught.