Like butter scraped over too much bread.

"I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it is my heart. I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to." - Bilbo Baggins, J.R.R Tolkien

I never gave this quote much thought before. It always sounded nice - just the sort of thing I would like, that I new meant more and did want to understand but I never could. But now I do. To me, my mind is young and my body feels old. Yet to everybody else my body appears young while my mind feels old, like I can not cover the distance between living in my body and my body living an entire life. I feel stretched, that I won't make it to tomorrow. I will still be here but I won't focus on the next day, or the day after, or the weeks, months, years to follow. Hell, I will be glad to look to the next hour, because my body feels old, and my mind stretched as it tries to connect my cog-spinning, gears whirring thoughts to my cold, painful, none obeying body. My cheeks are hollow, the skin on my cheeks taught from crying, my eyes rimmed by purple moons of exhaustion, mingling with my freckles, staining my paler than it usually is skin.

In a week I went from so alive to completely drained. Where did all my hard earned energy and spirit go? That which I had spent everyday of the last seven months desperately fighting to retrieve.  A mere matter of days is all it took to steal my blooming self and turn it into lethargy. I worked so hard. I fought for so long. I wanted to be better. I still went to be better... am I back to square one? Did I waste seven months popping pills, believing they would make me better? Faithfully taking the chalky white and the foul orange four times a day! Are fevers, chills, pain, red blotches that ooze fluid on my shin the reward my body gives me? I have been good to it, and it has betrayed me. Again.

The fact is, that I feel old. Frail, feeble. Weak. Whatever you do call it. That I should be able to look back at a long, long time and think "I have lived a life and now it concludes in my old age." But I do not. I can not because I am still young. But than, I still feel old. Pain is something that plays tricks on your mind. Time seems to fly when you are having fun, but it flows slow like molasses when enjoyment is not yours to have. I feel strained over time. My time takes a very long time to tick. I do not know if that is something I can describe. Only those who have felt it can understand. I feel I am stuck, my life frozen by nastiness, vile, while the world keeps moving. I can not plan, I can not do, and it makes my dreams void. I do not remember last month, nor last week. I can not remember how I felt yesterday other than that I felt drained. I am not simply tired, struck with fatigue. Every ounce of energy has left me, and I can not remember what it felt like to me, and that scares me. I want to scream for help, beg the world to restore me to my former self, but it will not. I don't want to feel like this. My mind is so keen, ready to work. I have so many wonderful thoughts left to think, and yet I can not. At times the tired makes awareness almost impossible. I could sit for hours, blankly, not thinking, just breathing. Somewhere in me I am happy, the part of me that is shielded in my heart. I love myself. I am happy to be alive. I want to be here. But my body is so done. Exhausted. how can I be so happy with the person I am, but hate what it in me? How do I fix it if get better? Will time restore me?

I do not want to die. My bone infection is not be fatal. There are treatments. But the tired always makes me fear tomorrow. Will I feel better, worse, the same? I want a holiday from my body. I will return, unlike Bilbo, but I do need a very long rest. Irony - that I sleep sixteen hours straight but it is not rest. The sleep merely perseveres me, so that I do not become more exhausted, but it never makes me feel better. It does not restore me. I want to walk away from my body like a spouse walks away from an abusive significant other, an employee leaves an unsatisfying job. I want to be me. I am still me, just different. I do not like it. I do not want time to play tricks on me. For time to tick slowly. For fear of tomorrow. I want to get better, to a better, to something that is better, but I can not remember what that feels like. Not even thickly spread butter on toast will make it happen.