Pain Diary Entry: 7 June 2023

Unwilling to go to bed last night as my body sat paralysed by pain on my couch, I forced myself to stretch and go out to see what the twilight would offer down the street by the river. Slowly negotiating the stairs and roadworks out front I made my way here, to try some test shots with a new composite setting on the camera I'm learning about. Normally used for the night sky star trail type pics, i wanted to know how bright the composite image would become. Shuffling from park bench to park bench I carried my new toy and its tripod and clicked away, able to ignore myself and fall into a world of shutter speed and ISO settings. Arriving home shortly after, I was ready to sleep, exhausted enough to know i could get there before the body gets smacked by the pain as it cools down, which feels like slowly being crushed. Then i see this pic and could see what my world looks like. Like im crossing the bridge heading into the fireball, everyday I wake this is what I face, a burning wreck of a body that I need to keep working, so I may stay alive. I can enjoy myself in times like these, where I find non-verbal similes. Unfortunately I am also beginning to realise that this level of pain, going for years now, is unlikely to reduce as I so wish, so to live with it means a lot of change, change i know and am implementing, just not liking it. The depth of hate within myself scares me sometimes though, as i work through the process to not let it control me. Finding moments like these to beat it into submission, constant feedback is what i fight, just to breathe, and damn its worth it, a plus side to existential thoughts is that I have to exist first to have them, and I'm quite fond of all that.