wink     ; )

Seeing the Dark Cloud

Apart from the very obvious pain, one of the hardest things about Clusters/Shadows is how exhausting they are. Pain management quickly drains my physical and emotional reserves. This is fine for a day or two, but Clusters are a marathon, not a sprint. By the time I'm two weeks in, my reserves are tapped out and I'm dreadfully aware that I have another two weeks ahead of me. Or maybe two months.

It is at this point that Despair begins to sing her seductive song.

The advice from other cluster sufferers is to Get Angry--anger does a wonderful job of chasing away despair. And they're right, it does. But anger requires a lot of energy, and by the time Despair come knocking at my door, I'm usually fresh out. The other problem is that Anger just isn't very sustainable. I can get angry for an hour no problem. But I don't know how to sustain anger for the weeks or months necessary to fight Cluster-induced Despair. Anger is great in the heat of battle, but it does little to sustain you during a siege. And that's what this is. I am besieged by pain and despair and they are waiting for my will to fight to starve, for me to collapse and surrender from exhaustion.

Anger doesn't help in this long-term siege, so I'm forced to convert that anger into something more durable. Revenge is the ultimate long-term version of Anger, but there is no one to exact Revenge from. (I could try to exact Revenge on Clusters in general by becoming a neurologist and curing it, but let's just say that that isn't going to happen.)

Resentment seems to be my next best option. It has an infinite shelf life and requires little energy to maintain. But I still have no one to resent (except maybe God) and by nature I don't seem to hold onto Resentment very well. Bitterness is an option too. It has nearly the shelf life of Resentment with the added bonus of having an appropriate object: I can be bitter that I'm afflicted by this condition. But I don't want to be a bitter person and I don't want to inflict my bitterness on the people around me, the people I love.

So what does that leave? What weapons do I have left to fight Despair? To ride out the Siege? The only one I can find is Grim Determination. I will resign myself to the fight, even if I know I will lose. There is a heavy cost to this: I must give up hope. Not the hope that I will eventually be OK, but the hope that tomorrow might be pain free. I cannot resign myself to the fight and hope for a reprieve at the same time. The disappointment of unrealized hope breaks my fragile resolve. In addition to giving up hope, I also give up joy. There is no joi de vivre in Grim Determination, no delight. There is only the setting of my feet to the path laid before me. And when all you see before you is battle, stopping to smell the roses just brings sadness and longing, not joy. However. This is a price worth paying in order to keep on fighting. So I soldier on as if it is my destiny. I do not flinch when the pain comes. And I do not surrender to Despair.