One of "those"days

Today I just feel like curling up under a rock and hiding. People are getting on my nerves. I am tired of arguing with people about how I feel. If I tell you that I am ok, then I am ok. Please don't tell me what you think. You are not me. You don't know what I am feeling at any given moment. I and I alone know that. I don't want to have to sit and have a five minute conversation with you about how I am feeling, it makes no sense! If I am sick, I tell you when I am sick. If I don't want to be bothered then you'll know, and so on and so forth. I have more than enough to deal with without people telling me what I need or don't need.

I think I am tired of people thinking that they know what's best for me. People don't listen! Most people have no idea what I have to go through on a given day, the uncertainty, the pain, the tiredness. Some days I feel like an empty well, and no matter how much water is poured into the well to replenish it, the ground just soaks it up. They will never feel the foreignness of their own bodies. My body is so damaged. I hate touching my own skin because when I look at my hands they are either so thin and lifeless. My knuckles are skeletal through the thin film of skin that covers my hands. My palms become course and rough. These hands are not the hands that I have known all of my life. And when they are not so emaciated from the dialysis treatments sucking all of the life out of them, they are puffy and swollen from the excess fluid hiding within my body. My hands are the first sign that I have gained an excessive amount of fluid. They begin to feel like they have been injected with collagen or cellulose. They are so swollen that it hurts to do simple tasks, like making fists. Each time it feels like they will burst at any point, and an oozing concoction of the invisible fluid and blood will flow through the cracks. My fingertips are padded and numbed, so it makes it a little more difficult to use my hands when feeling certain things, especially things that are soft. Whenever I touch something or someone it all feels the same under the weight of my bloated fingertips. And I can't feel the warmth of a person's skin under them, only the heat coursing through my own hands. I know that when my hands begin to swell, then my legs and feet are not far behind. It feels as if invisible weights are attached to my legs and I am walking around paying penance for some unknown punishment. Most of my shoes become tight and uncomfortable, so I have to wear house shoes. My chest gets so tight, that my breath comes in short bursts. I can feel my lungs straining to take in air and then release it. It is uncomfortable being bloated once a month, but having to go through this every week is crazy!

Most days I feel like there is no familiarity in my being anymore. I don't know who I am. I look in the mirror and I see the remnants of my dialysis treatments. My body feels so hollow, like there is nothing but air in me and when I move people can hear the soft whistling sound of emptiness, of air moving through an uninterrupted cylinder. My face is dry and my eyes feel like they have sank deep into the recess of my sockets. My clothes don't fit. Everything just hangs from my frame like hand me downs. And I know that the tiredness and fatigue show in a face that I barely recognize. At the same time, I know that I am within this body somewhere. That the person I have become has not given up and retreated into the face that I see in the mirror. At least the mirror person listens, knowing that her reign of this body will be someday be shared with the part of me that has retreated. I think she has become a hybrid of me. The me before dialysis and the me after dialysis. She knows that, at times I don't want to fight and scream, that I just want to cry, and she picks me up and whispers that these are things that I have to do. I have to fight and I have to scream because everyone thinks they know what's best for me without knowing and understanding my life.

Today, I just want people to listen. I want them to listen to me cry, or scream, or breathe. I just want them to sit silently and look at me and listen. I want them to see me clearly and wholly, all sides of me. I want them to understand and accept me. Accept the fact that I am in the middle of a battle that has little to do with them. I don't want you to sit there and listen to the sound of my voice and tell me that I am tired! Some days my voice is weak after dialysis and my breathing is a bit labored. I am not tired, it just takes a day or so for my body to recover from treatments! Dialysis treatments affect people in different ways! We are not the same, we do not go through the same things! I am not helpless! Yes, I have bad days and even bad weeks, but so does everyone else! I just want to be normal, have a normal life, do normal things without people asking me every three minutes whether or not I am ok or if I needed anything. If I did I would get it myself or let someone know!

I think, at this point, I am just tired or people. Maybe I'll get over it soon. Right now, I think it's best that I avoid people because I feel the tension building inside of me and that is never a good sign. I think I'll go for a walk, maybe that will help calm my nerves...