Every few weeks I wake up in the morning and I know, without any doubt, that this will be a bad day.There are no precursors, nothing to foreshadow its imminent appearance or help me find ways of warding it off. It comes and I'm just as powerless to stop it as I am to make it walk off faster than it chooses.
The helplessness of it infuriates me and each time it leaves me I resolve that next time I won't let it take hold. I swear to myself that I'll fight it. That I'll push it away before it can settle in and gnaw at my insides with its restless fury.
And then the next time comes and the sinking feeling in my chest when I wake up and take the first breath of the day tells me that it's too late. It's already here. Already settled and waiting for me. Whether I acknowledge it or not is irrelevant. I can lie to myself, close my eyes and pretend I don't see it, but sooner or later, I'll feel it and taste it and smell it. It has all the time in the world and it'll wait there, mocking me with its patience until I admit its presence and then all pretense is lost.
Think back to the last time you've stubbed your toe against the wooden leg of that old sofa you've sworn so many times before to move. That first quarter of an instant when the toe has already made the connection with the hard wood but before the sickening vertigo of pain has come. The tiny, blissful moment when your brain crazily wonders, "will it really hurt? but maybe it won't? could it be...?" and then the moment is gone, the pain sinks its fangs in and you double over, feeling at once betrayed and justified. And angry... so very, very angry to have been disappointed yet again.
And then, if you're anything like me, there's also fury at yourself - for not moving the sofa as you planned, for not being more careful as you walked, for not doing a myriad of things that in the aftermath occur to you as possible ways of having prevented what you're now experiencing.
And so it is with me and the bad days. Overtime the fury has lessened and now it varies from almost dispassionate musings to plaintive whimpers - all centered around the pointless quest for a solution to prevent the next bout while at the same time struggling to get through the current one.
And it gets worse. Of course it does, why shouldn't it? Unlike with stubbing your toe where the pain is as bad in the first moment as it'll get and then it starts getting better and better until you can unclench your teeth, breathe again, maybe release the curses you've swallowed and maybe resolve once again to move that sofa... Unlike that, my bad days spiral out of control slowly, taunting me with promises of worse to come.
The peak usually doesn't come until hours later when I'm all wound up and tense and least capable of handling it. Sometimes, it's a series of smaller peaks, each one soothing me with false promises of being the last one. Having been fooled too many times, I now greet each peak with wary suspicion, always peering after it, trying to see what isn't there.
And then, without any warning, it's over. There's a surge of my usual energy, a bright burst of optimism, a resolution that I won't let it happen again, a desire to lie to myself and tell myself that it's over for good this time. And life goes on.
For those of you who are still wondering... Yes, today is one of those days.
