How Would I Gnow?

I seem a little disenchanted this morning to be taking my last full-sized steroid pill. For the next five days I'll be taking a half of a pill, and that will be the end of the series of Prednisone as medication for my rheumatoid arthritis. The fact that I received written verification by letter from my doctor that what I'm experiencing is a recognized dis-ease with recognized predictable symptoms ain't exactly a thrill a minute either, but that's nothing compared to how this medicine has relieved what's probably bound to return at some time in the future.

The physical pain I've experienced over the last few months is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. I think I"ve been pretty fortunate to have lived for at least sixty-nine years without suffering any more pain than I have. The fact that steroids were available to completely take that horrific pain away in just a few days is a miracle to me, and not a religious miracle at all. Such a treatment can be repeated. I don't know how long it can do that again, but my doctor says it can, although she herself don't know how many times that could happen.

I have been able to play my piano again without pain for the last week and a half, and yet I haven't. Not any for more than just a few minutes just to see if I could do it without instigating those malefic results. Candidly, attempting to push through the pain of the arthritis was probably the worst response I could have engendered. I'm not anxious at all to reconstitute that pain. I guess I wasted the money I couldn't really afford to spend on that digital keyboard, because I don't care if it sits there and rots down to the last plastic fiber, I'm not going to do that to myself again for either love or money.

I don't know much about having love or money enough to spend either recklessly. As far as money is concerned, I must have unconsciously taken a vow of poverty. I'm not so sure what I did, in this regard, was so unconscious or not. I did make some religious vows when I was awfully young that precluded having much money to pay my way though difficult situations, so that I would stay on the side of the lowly. My father was ridiculously idealistic and lectured constantly on the subject. In America, I've always been among the poorest of the poor, and if nothing else it's assured me that no woman in her right mind would ever claim that she loved me for my money. I''ve never been with a woman that had less resources than me.

I sat in the closest proximity I've been for the last 27 years with the onliest woman I've actually really loved in my whole life, including my natural-born mother, and realized that in real time for the first time in all my life that I was capable of romantic love. How could I have been so stupid and treated her so carelessly and been so totally ignorant of my callousness? I became aware of that why in those few moments. I didn't have enough to offer her to keep her satisfied with loving me, and I didn't have anymore to give. I had to let her find her own bliss, and it slowly killed me. I don't feel human anymore, and haven't for a very long time.

I probably just lied. I just typed what I wrote with tears streaming from my eyes. I think I sort of have to be human to cry. I guess I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I've tried to let other people love me "before it's too late." I'm convinced those fools that have tried to let me love them have been sincere. At least, to the degree that they too wanted someone to love them back, and took a chance on me. I have despicable double standards. They simply didn't measure up, and I ended up the son-of-a-bitch. No blame.