I want to know what love is. I want you to show me. Or - how do you admire something you do not understand?

Often when a loved one is ill, those closest to him/her say something along the lines of "If I could take it away, I would." or "If only I could carry this burden, then you wouldn't have to."

Such statements baffle me.

Frankly because - if the are true - they mean you, whoever you are, are LIGHTYEARS more selfless than I.

Because if someone I loved got hit with what I presently have... I would struggle mightily with being able to say that I wished it was me instead of the other person.

I'm quite certain this makes me an asshole.

But this is a confession of sorts.

My attempt at being true.

I love my husband, my dog, and my family with an intensity that I cannot explain... but if I had the chance to be rid of this cornucopia of maladies by passing them off on another, I would.

It'd be with a heavy heart, mind you. I'm not a complete monster.

But if I could reclaim the health I lost by transitioning it off on a good samaritan offering to carry my load, I would in a heartbeat.

So for everyone who's offered to take this on for me, you best be glad God doesn't work that way... 'cause I'd feel bad about it, but I'm pretty sure I'd hand over this shit to anyone willing to take it.

That also said, if someone I loved was suffering, I don't think I could say with sincerity that I'd be willing to take on their burden.

Help to the degree I am able?

Absolutely.

Step up my game? Provide love and support? Even fucking COOK for them?

I'd do it.

But I would want to walk in their shoes.

And I cannot imagine a love so selfless that someone - anyone - anywhere would want to walk in mine.

Maybe y'all are just WAY better at this than I am.

Maybe you know what love is, and I don't.

Maybe your soul is more grown up than my soul and maybe I'll get there someday.

I don't know.

But for now, you should know, you're better than me.

And I can't say I even admire you for it.

Musical Theatre Sacrament

Who lives; Who dies; Who tells your story?

Anywhere is

Thousands - maybe millions - of people suffer from chronic illness.

We are not alone.

But we are so desperately, hopelessly alone.

I am desperately, hopelessly alone.

Both in my daily solitude - laying or sitting at the house, feeling a constant mixture of terrible and terrified

But also when in company.

It's not your fault... but I look at you... and I see what I used to be.

What I used to take for granted.

What I'd do anything to recover.

When you speak to me, despite your attempts to draw near, we remain helplessly, hopelessly galaxies apart.

It's not a competition - suffering

But even among my chronically ill friends, I seem to be separate.

For there are meds and methods and BELIEF for your illness

An illness, which, most times, your own body caused.

You bear no guilt

for your organic sickness.

But me?

Medicine made my illness

But it will not or cannot unmake it.

It certainly cannot manage it.

You cannot manage what you do not understand...

"I think I have an infection" - the words ring in my ears every day.

Not even the tinnitus can block it out.

My guilt.

I broke my beautiful body.

And it's still breaking...

Like my heart and my spirit.

I am so miserably, desperately lonely.

So often I have thought of Jesus - deferential Jew left lonely on the cross.

Joined by two others, yes, but still hopelessly, helplessly alone...

"My God, why have you forsaken me?"

I am in despair.

I am Judas.

But I cannot see the way out of my cage.

Physically and emotionally damned.

Each time by my own hand.

"Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves."

I am alone in this cell.

Even among visitors, I am alone.

We all die alone.

But I never wanted to live this way...

Death becomes her?

Sometimes, when I look at photos from before I was poisoned, I feel so far removed. Like the person in the photo isn't - and wasn't ever - me. Whoever she is, she's a stranger. And she's dead.

She'll never be in another picture again...