'it's the next stage - i'm so very sorry' said my GP today, when she saw me after returning from her holidays, when i staggered into the examination room with my 'new wheels' = the walker.  for a moment i wanted to reply 'yes, but we didn't really think i would manage to get here' - then i realised that if i suddenly jumped from the pain i was experiencing even six month ago to what i'm going through today, i wouldn't have made it, but since i'm going downhill very steadily (albeit terrifyingly fast), i'm somehow able to survive the pain...

for the last two days my legs are playing up: they are really hurting, and they feel weak.  they don't feel mine at all, it's really strange - i can see them looking the same as always, but they are becoming an estranged part of my body, part that i can no longer control...

but on a positive note, i think i made two friends last week, one being my student and one being a person who asked me for help in filling in some forms...  somehow, they open up to me, and i ended up listening, thinking, feeling, and finally talking...  it's so difficult for me to talk to people: those who knew me as a fully abled, energetic, going-going-gone time don't know the person i'm becoming now, and those who meet me now have no idea who i was, who i used to be.  i nearly wrote that they don't know 'the real me' but i don't know any more myself who the real me is: i have all this past in me, which made me the 'me' - but this fibromyalgia-crippled body is me as well, yet a completely different one, dependent, constantly exhaused, having great difficulties to do anything.

is this what my grandfather felt after having his legs amputated: that he is not himself any more, that the body he is stuck with belongs to some other Stan, who he didn't know and didn't wish to know?  i have no idea, but i know how much he was looking forward to die, to end the pain.  because i started my waiting already.