I Give Up. Again.
Last night I gave up. Over-active dogs and an over-active illness were keeping me from sleep, my troubles were diving at me from every direction, and I reached the point of mentally throwing up my arms and shouting, “I give up! I’m finished.” And it felt right.
I’ve found myself at this same place many times before, which clearly means that surrendering isn’t the end for me. It is, instead, an emotional push-back after spending days, weeks or months wrestling whatever problems I’m currently facing. It’s seeing with sudden clarity that what I’ve been hoping was inner fortitude was actually a willful blindness to the inevitability of loss, or pain, or a hard fate. It is the frustration of looking in the mirror and seeing a pasted-on smile, or hearing my shrill-pitched voice conveying an almost hysterical — and completely uncharacteristic — optimism. And so, I reach the end of pretense.
Last night the issues facing me were many. Our six-month-old puppy — a rash acquisition — had been teething on anything in sight, and he and our other dog were scrapping loudly over a bone. I’d crept down to the sofa to both monitor their play and listen for signs that the bone had been abandoned for something more interesting — an armchair, for instance. I was also turning over in my head an ophthalmologist appointment earlier that day, during which I’d told the doctor I’d been diagnosed with ME/CFS, only to catch her blank stare. So I’d explained the acronym, and saw — or fancied I saw — her confusion change to disrespect.
When I wasn’t juggling these thoughts, I was swatting away concerns for my stressed-out husband and the business I can no longer help him run, our grown children and their various job/relationship/money concerns . . . healthcare worries . . . climate change . . . government corruption . . . the global pandemic — listen to science, for god’s sake!
And running through it all like a dark thread of despair was an awareness of my own unrelenting illness — the realization that, if nothing changes, I will feel this ill for the rest of my life, and the majority of my goals will remain out of reach.
It was at this point that I gave up. I stopped fighting. I lay on the sofa in the dark and thought, if there is a god, better he/she/it/they take me now. I just can’t fight anymore. In my mind I was a beleaguered, exhausted fugitive cornered in a barn. I raised my hands, walked outside, and waited for the bullets.
They didn’t come. They never do. Instead, I felt a sudden, genuine relief. Because for me these moments aren’t about self-annihilation — not really. They’re about running and running, and reaching a place with no escape, then turning to face what’s pursuing me.
I have a disease. It’s not going away — not today, at any rate. Not in the foreseeable future. On top of that, and partly because of it, my life is complicated. I have few answers for myself, and virtually none for those around me. I can’t be more than I am, and I’m less than I used to be — at least when it comes to my ability to earn money, win love, or make a difference in this world. If what I am is not enough, I’m doomed and I always have been. It’s as simple as that.
Years ago I had a strange and vivid dream. I was standing on a hilltop, gazing over a dark and verdant view particularly pleasing to my soul. In time I turned and noticed a small cottage at my back. I circled it, ducked inside, and found myself in a humble, low-ceilinged room. I was glancing at photos on the mantle when an elderly woman joined me. The house belonged to her.
We exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries, then:
“You know you’re dead?” the old woman said.
I heard myself answer, “I know.”
“It’s not up to me whether you go back,” she said.
I answered again, “I know.”
After I surrender, as I did last night, I grow quiet. I listen for the verdict. I wait for an answer. I still my soul and tread softly, so as not to drown the message when it comes. And it always does come — in a song, or a book, or a show, or a dream, or the words of a stranger, or the wisdom of a friend. A door opens, or at least a window, and I move through it, walking this time — no more dodging, no more running. I let myself be led, having handed my journey over to something bigger than myself — again.
