Melding...

I've been trying to write this one post for three months now.  I decided to stop.  I don't know when I can finish it.  Perhaps I won't and will just publish it as is.  For now, I thought I would get back to writing before I stop forever.

Life has changed for me.

I think I have become sick.  By that I mean, I no longer believe that I can pretend to be well, the way that I do when folk come around.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm certain to still try.  But I am struggling to get through the days and nights.  They have melded together in a sea of extreme fatigue, pain, pre-syncope, and nausea.

I should that it is more like standing on the shore and being pummeled by waves.  In between them, is a gentle quiet that I enjoy with Amos.  I am still trying to live in the in-between.  But the fatigue is making that rather difficult.

It is rare for me to have productivity in my days.  Primarily, I wake, tend to Amos, and languish on the sofa.  I have been letting dishes pile up in the sink until it is so full that I must do them.  I dislike the lack of visual rest, but the very thought of doing anything exhausts me.

Trying to concentrate enough to do anything is also exhausting.  Tending to my bills and re-jiggering my meager funds takes up the majority of whatever brain power I can muster up.

I did decide to sell things around the house, starting with listing my antique typewriter.  It was hard, letting go of the things I have bought over the years and things given to me by others.  However, I had much success selling on Facebook Marketplace.

Last year, I was approximately $600 behind in medical at the close of the year.  I also have the $349 lung wash hospital bill waiting.  And my dental visit in February resulting in the 5th cavity/filling in just under a year.  That bill was $330.  I was trying to get to $1,200 so that I could start the year (even though it was already February when I started selling.

The more I sold the more brutal I got with myself as far as choosing more items to sell.  I sold antique books, antique cameras, and antique doodads, such as a postage scale, aviator glasses, and toiletry tins.  I sold and sold and sold, which was exhausting between taking the photos and measurements, creating the listings, chatting with buyers, and getting up for their pickups.  I sold and sold and sold until I reached $1,848 across 104 sales.  I was so very excited to actually get ahead.

Alas, though.  My eight-year-old washing machine broke.  I gave it the old college try as far as repairing it, but whilst I learned how to open a machine and futz with the pump, the washing machine still needed repair or replacement.  I chose the latter, believing repair would be throwing good money after bad.

I was so proud that, over the last six months, I had started an emergency fund savings account and was nearing $1,000.  Dave Ramsey would be around.  With all my budgeting savings accounts, I thought surely and emergency fund would be superfluous.  Alas, I was wrong.  This ungrateful wretch cannot be thankful that she had the funds to purchase a washing machine, because she is still despairing that she cannot win for losing.

For the past three years, I have slivered my budgetary pie and looked for savings every which way to Sunday.  However, each time I gain myself some breathing room each month,  I find myself facing another medical bill or the like.  It seems like every week I'm trying to figure out how to pay for another medication.  SIGH.

So, my days meld into one another until they are a sea of nothingness.  I wake, putter, and then fall asleep again after just three hours.  I wake, putter, and then fall asleep a second time.  I have sometimes even had a third nap.  I wonder at what my life has become, at what is happening to my body because of the ravages of Sjögren's Syndrome.

I am ill each and every day ... in body and in spirit.