Pain

Allow me to confess; I am in nearly constant pain. Physical pain. Mostly lower back pain. I have to check myself when I turn over or move in bed because the pain wakes me up, now nearly always. I forget about it when I am at work. I am able to function and do my job, with occasional twinges, shocks, and reminders that the pain is always there, waiting. Simple pain medication, ibuprofen helps less and less. Stronger pain medication leaves me in a stupor, unable to do anything.

One thing that exacerbates the pain is the dreaded walking of the dog. We have two dogs: a pit bull, Pickles, and a frenchie, Duke. I am the one who has to handle a barely controllable but usually rampant and jarring Pickles. Every time I do, I suffer for at least a day with even more aches and pains than I can describe. I never asked for Pickles. I never wanted a dog, period. Over time, he has grown on me. But he is a handful. And quite unpredictable and untrainable. My hope is that he finally puts me out of my misery for good. As in, sends me to the hospital where I can be drugged to death in an endless sleep.
This is not a fear. It is a hope. Why? Because I just don't care anymore.

As I get older, the pain gets to be more and more of a presence and a personality of it's own. Let's see: headaches on most days. Jarring lower back pain and stiffness that jolts me sleep nightly, prevents me from standing up straight without an orchestra of pain pulling me back down. Joint pain in my elbows, hips, and knees. Various unlocalized aches and pains up and down my body. And lastly, a gradually more persistent twitch and swelling of my right eye which the clowns at Kaiser failed to diagnose a couple years ago, and which I don't care about anymore.

In short, this life of pain will be the biggest impetus to my ending it. My parents used to say I could be anything I want to be. Well, I want to be dead.