Yea to the National Health Service for their contributions to my well-being! It's working!
England is very concerned about my well-being, though I don't take it personally: they're concerned about everyone's well-being. There are signs- good, strong signs made of something durable and impervious to damp- regarding how many vegetables you eat, and what you should do if you're bullied, and the fact that your food is sourced from a few counties away (I know, it's parishes, not counties. I prefer to think of them as Shires, since everything here is within a Shire- just go ahead and picture the Hobbitses, it's easier than trying to put the Democratic Theology or Theocratic Democracy {plus bonus Royal Persons}in the same bed together.) The UK cares so much about its' subjects' well-being that it uses the word "sourced" in the signs and banners and spots that remind you to feel good about your food, rather than potentially insult your intelligence by using the phrase "comes from." I feel content with my lot in a way that I never did in the US- though that might be the drugs talking.
I'm pretty sure it's the drugs talking. I'd prefer it to be the beer talking, but I don't regularly drink becuase I'm taking drugs for my Chronic Pain Condition, which is from a nail put in my head when I was bullied in High School that's just slowly worked itself into my cranuim, past my Prefrontal Cortex and into the Medulla Oblongata, or "Middle," where it consistently pokes into the area of my brain where I think about High School. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of the pathological chronic pain- your brain refuses to stop thinking about the pain. When I got over here I swore (standing in my first-every backyard, looking at the fence around it. There wasn't a sunset or a raw potato and I wasn't even wearing a Civil War Era dress, but I swore nonetheless,) that I would change medications and I would do so with an eye toward ultimately taking less of them. And I have! I switched one of my anti-depressants for another one!...and I realize that this doesn't sound like progress. It is, it is; it's such dreamy, half-satisfied progress that everything seems livelier, less effortful, and zippy. I dropped another one althogether. I'm so sort of blissed out by the fact that I've done it- I moved here from the US without anyone losing their eyesight from random stress-reflex flailing while I was packing some knives, without sending off four or five copies of any divorce papers to my already-moved spouse, just to make sure he got the point; without losing any teeth from either lack of vitamin C or from just giving up and falling face-forward onto the concrete sidewalk, mouth first. It's hard to sort out which is the greater source of happiness: my survival or my chemical intake. I'm pretty sure it's the chemical intake that's dictating I not worry about it.
I miss people. There: that's the thing, the one thing, that makes my gently muddled mind become uncertain of the justification that I should not worry and also be happy. There are people I miss, and I miss them less than I should. Pills, or just me? Am I completely enslaved by the lovely Seratonin and Melatonin and many other similarly named hormones, and am I then less sympatheric to my beloved's voices and trials and failed attempts than I one was? I though myself a lout many times before, before I came here and met my little navy-blue-and-white encapsulated buddies, for not being a good friend. Self-flagellation about how much less effort you put into your relationships in comparison to, say, Charlotte on Sex in the City is a given for those of us who just cannot put in that much effort. No matter how hard it is to button your shirt and no matter how many extra minutes it takes us to brush our sensitive teeth and touchy gums, those of us who contend with some extra Substance P (which, by the by, is a neurotransmitter that is located in the spinal fluid whose sole joy it is to transmit pain signals to the brain. People with FM have more of it, generally, but the fascinating thing about that to me is that it's named Substance P. Whomever it was that discovered it must have had a busy day, and by the time they got to the naming bit they must have looked at their array of tubes and disposable safety goggles and little puddles of spinal fluid on the laboratory floor that were still left to clean up, and said to their impatient PhD candidate intern, all ready with the pen and official naming paperwork: "You know, it's late; let's just write down...uh...Substance P. Yeah. There's the P for Pain, so that's good enough- the judges at the Nobel Institute don't need a fancy name anyway, right? The important thing is the quality of the work. Now here's the mop,")...those of us who have to contend with perhaps three times more Substance P (also could be the name of a seventies-era laboratory-based street drug) must feel guilt about it. Sorry, but we have to. It's as requisite as acquiring full-time under-eye baggies from the ongoing lack of sleep that usually comes with hurting all the time. And since I miss people, since I'm now really really far away from them, I feel like I should be really whipping myself for not rallying and swooping into a letter-writing frenzy, complete with country cute stickers that I got at the carbon-neutral Tesco in our next town over and sketches of the house in colored pencil...but I'm not. I feel OK.
I miss people, but not enough. It's the drugs, unless it's not. The tricky part is deciding which of those things is me and which of those things is induced. The not-tricky part, I guess, is conducting my day as I always have and just getting through it, one distraction at a time, one hour-long rest at a time. I apologize, my friends; I might feel differently but it seems that won't make much difference in the amount of chi I can expend. The thing that has become clearer, so clear it's like a beautiful hand-blown glass: the ones who stick with me, who have stuck with me, through my plodding communications over the years are very good people to be friends with. We chronics are lucky that way.
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