Pondering

I sometimes feel my body is a microcosm of all the pain in the world.  Not the suffering, for as I have written often, I feel suffering is a choice.  Pain we have no control over but all you need to do is look at the smiling faces of those living in squalid conditions and ask yourself “how can they be smiling?” to understand that choice.  And of course, when one knows nothing of “I” technology, designer coffee and designer clothes, they have nothing to compare themselves to, do they?  Comparing.  It’s the Queen of suffering.

And there are times when I choose to suffer.  Like stating that my body is a microcosm of the pain in the world.  I didn’t mean that in any ‘holier than thou’ way…..I just meant that there is so much pain and suffering in the world, when one is laying flat on one’s back and the pain just keeps jacking up, it makes one wonder about that age-old question, why?  Why me?  What am I here to learn, and am I here to learn anything at all, in fact?

I’ve written that the body and the mind want are sometimes (most times) at odds with what the soul needs, and that is the most difficult thing to accept.  Especially, when like me, one has family and friends who despite my situation, are still in my life.  Sometimes I am such a bitch (like last night…a good friend came over and we went to a movie and I was so stressed and in so much pain I was ridiculously out of control verbally) I just wonder why they stick around.  But that’s what friends do, regardless.  And there is much that I put up with (with everyone) as well.

It’s very difficult sometimes, to watch  my friends and family having full, active lives….living, loving, working, playing, etc.  Yes, they have challenges.  The difference between my challenges and theirs is that they get through to the other side and I don’t.   I guess that in my case, getting to the other side of the challenge is more of a mental thing than a physical one.   And that is what is so darn hard to accept.  And where suffering comes in.

If I don’t think about it, I am okay.  When I start to think about how I’m getting worse and worse, and scared to death of being paralyzed then tucked away somewhere and forgotten about except once or twice a month, it makes me want to take that ultimate step into the darkness…and find out once and for all if there truly is something on the other side, or if all those experiences I’ve had visually (and I’ve had many…and no, they were not drug related because most of the experiences happened long before I started needing medication) were just my mind playing tricks on me.

I hope it’s the former and not the latter.  Because otherwise, what would have been the point?  Why all these years of pain (and yes, sometimes, suffering) if there is nothing but blackness and nothingness and an eternity without my soul?  I remember thinking that when I was eight years old and my grandfather died.  Just sitting, staring at the stars outside my bedroom window, knowing I’d never see him again and wondering…where is he now?  Where is his soul?

If I have a soul, where will it be?  Just pondering.  My faith is important to me, but I think that if G-d is real, He wants us to ponder.