It doesn't get easier. You just get stronger.

Warning: some harsh language ahead. But, yeah. Life is [insert harsh language].

---

Still at MGH; been here since Monday. I just went down to the second floor to have a swallowing test; as I seem to be aspirating things when I swallow. It's not apparent from looking or feeling externally, but since I keep choking they waned me to take this test to have the X-ray to look at for comparison.

I did not sleep last night; maybe 3 ½ hours. I was up late talking with my sisters. To be frank: life is fucking hard. There’s no other way for me to describe it right now. Life is hard. God Damnit. And it’s so fucking hard in so many ways; you can’t toss a pebble without breaking glass.

So I didn’t sleep well, even after we decided to all go to sleep at 4am. I miss my sisters, I love them so much and it hurts me to think of all the ways that life breaks a person down to the bare minimum of humanity. It hurts me so much.

And I’m so tired of not being able to properly cry I could just scream until I die. My eyes don’t produce tears (and the same for my mouth/saliva…which is one component making swallowing infinitely more difficult) and I haven’t cried tears in over three years. I forget what it feels like. But I miss it all the same. When I cry, my face contorts and my body hurts- I often get headaches from the tension and lack of release. But there are no tears.

So I’ve been (not) crying most of the morning, if I’m honest.

But when I went down to take this disgusting swallowing test, (I get so much anxiety from having to put foreign objects into my body; barium isn’t “absorbable” by the body, but that really doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m still swallowing a soft silvery metallic alkaline earth metal. That’s the truth. I don’t want it.)--

But when I got down to the waiting room before the test, this cute technician came through the room I was in; laying on my stretcher, looking a mess. He smiled at me. And then he turned around to leave and I read the back of his shirt:

It doesn’t get easier.

You just get stronger.

It washed over me like a tidal wave. I felt everything at once. I wept, tearlessly. My heart broke. My soul ached like it was leaving my body for dead.

It doesn’t get easier. You just get stronger.

That statement drowned me, as I'm sitting lifelessly on the stupid stretcher covered by a thin blanket. I wanted to believe it. I do believe it. But it’s so hard to. I don’t feel like I’m getting stronger. It’s the opposite. Everything feels like it's getting harder. I feel like my body and soul are just giving up, slowly letting go and letting go and letting go after trying to hold on for so fucking long. It’s just so hard. I want to believe I am getting stronger. That I can conquer all this shit. All the physical failures of my body; rise above. All the weight of my psyche; ascend like a goddamn phoenix. Own all this. Own it all, claim it as my life, shitty as it is, and just rise. Wake up, emerge, rebel. Survive. Be better on the other side. Stronger, deeper, richer, wiser.

But the truth is I’m tired. I feel more often than not that I’m just done with all of this. Finished feeling, being, existing like this any more. I feel like I can’t do it any more. My body withers away, over and over before my tearless crying eyes. I watch as my mind plays devil games. I feel helpless against all of it. My auto-immune disease is mysterious and unfamiliar; no one has answers. And my mind is along for this villainous cycle; riding the roller coaster from Hell through all the zero-G free falls and it feel like there is no end.

But.

It doesn’t get easier. You just get stronger.

Makes me cry. and I can’t help but admit it’s because I believe this little anecdote. I want to believe it. That human beings are fucking phoenixes. We rise from the burnt ashes of our lives over and over again. I’ve seen it so many times; my heroes, these incredible spiritual masters who live through unimaginable horrors and emerge on the other side: stronger, deeper, richer, wiser. And I want to believe that for myself. I have this sneaking suspicion that hope is still out there. And it makes me weep.

Life is hard. It’s so fucking hard. There is so much loss. Sometimes it feels like there is nothing but loss. Loss of faith, loss of childhood, loss of innocence, loss of life. Heavy things we have to carry forever. Poverty, starvation, grief, disease, racism, despair, hatred, the weight of the world. How can a person bear it?

I don’t know. And yet we do, somehow.

I keep thinking, reminding myself: be the superhero you want to see in the world. Be that person who rises from the ashes and spreads her wings like a fucking Queen. Be that wisdom, strength, power and resilience. Embody faith, trust, hope, love. And the greatest of these? Love? Love for yourself? Love for the world? Love that conquers all the darkness that drowns the world over an over?

It doesn’t get easier. It really doesn’t.

But maybe we can get stronger. Maybe I can be stronger. Strength in weakness; the ultimate paradox. The reason why the story of Jesus and a God who embodied every pain imaginable makes me weep. Because it was for love. It is for love. There is profound strength to be found. Even in weakness. I see it, over and over in people I love and admire and hold in the highest regard. Now I just need to be able to see it in myself.

 This is terror. This is water. This is beauty. This is life.

earth day is every day

Thoughts on the earth, which is the cosmos, which is the Truth

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Are we on the back of a whale,

riding the sea like a cruise ship

strapped to the back of a marine placental animal;

holding our collective breath

when the rogue mammal dives deep

to feed, to live?

If she is our warm-blooded mother,

slipping into the sea after land evolution

grew too tiresome

if she is our ride through life

this in one fucking hell of a jaunt,

I must say.

But she knows sacrifice.

She knows the extended song

of grief

she echoes her viscous melancholy

throughout the oceans wide.

She travels thousands of miles

to the Earth’s equator to give birth;

calf after calf after calf dying

at the hand of our foolishness

we've been hunting her down for years

for oil to burn,

bones to carve;

corralling her to perform tricks;

her dying over and over in captivity

and all the while we are

dumping toxins over the edge of this ship

on her back

onto her body, into her mouth

infecting her water, her air

stifling the life of our caregiver—

Could we have honestly expected anything different?

------

“The sky looks like it could kill,” he said

as we watched the dark turbulence roll towards us;

we were sitting nonchalantly, dangling bare feet

over the pier; the ocean rippling in

preparation; our old shoes and socks laying lifeless

at my hip.

It could, you know. Kill us.

The universe has no

thought to us.

It’s constant quest

is a search for a balance, that

homeostasis

which is heartless, unfeeling.

Perhaps not evil, but not compassionate, either. 

It's a toss up.

Maybe it could kill. After all, lightning split

the tree next to my parents’ house

straight down the middle

its blackened tar burn

along a jagged edge

of something that tried to be alive.

The wind can make a funnel

that takes you away.

The water cycle, which is the sky,

which is the earth,

can rain, storm, hurricane and flood

when we least expect it

it can freeze us to death in ice

it can boil us alive where the delicate

ozone has started to disintegrate.

The terra firma, which is the ground,

which is the earth

can give way, tsunamis and famines

drown us or whither us away to nothing

The universe has

no thought to us.

But, as a thought bearing soul

in what seems like a vapid chaos,

perhaps it is my job

to have a thought for us.

It’s a burden, to care for everything

to break the planet’s fever

to feed the young

to weep for injustice

to plant trees and sit in their shadows

to rescue the lost

to save the exiled.

It's too much.

But this sneaking thought,

trifling, skirting around my mind-

which is the heart, which is the cosmos,

which is the Truth

slowly growing

like a creakily opening fist

gently, stiff and hurting

from holding on so tightly; slowly

unclenching the world:

the words are small. 

 

if I give some of this to you,

we can do this

together.