Posted by Jackie M. on November 18, 1998 at 01:52:52:
Several days ago I woke to familiar harbingers of the unmerciful pain awaiting me. Though familiar are the tortuous cues; the slow, increasing pressure in my eye like the devil's hot thumb, or the energy draining from my body through the jagged cut of dread, I can never become accustomed to them. They strike the same fear in me as I felt at the first strike, 24 years ago.
After all these years I still find myself unable to accept that I must endure the torture once again. Two days into the sadistic cycle of pacing through profane peaks of pain and taunting valleys of relief, I tell myself I can no longer do this; I am ready to take back control and end the monster along with my life. In the brief valleys of relief I contemplate how; I dismiss an overdose as should I fail, my only source of minimal pain relief will be denied me. I contemplate cutting wrists but deplore the thought of who might find me and the mess. I entertain other methods, but my thoughts are always interupted by thoughts of my family. And in the end there is always something remaining that mystifies me in that this torture has been unforgiving for so very long; that something is hope. I really don't know why I should hope that someday the torture will cease; it almost seems foolish. But yet it's there. It almost makes me angry, that I should be clinging to hope like a childhood dream for so long. It would be easier to stop hoping, I think. But for now I'll climb out of the cluster trenches slowly, and tell myself like I have for 24 years, that it won't come back. And when it does, I suppose that hope will pace with me, cry with me, and cling to me; Perhaps much like the poet, Emily Dickenson wrote, it perches in your soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops .....at all.
My thoughts and prayers to all of you who suffer the torture and cling to the hope.