You: Hello there, I hope your day is going a lot better than mine.
Lauren: Hey, Rainbow! I’m really glad you reached out. I’m sorry your day’s been rough—I’m here if you want to talk about it or just need a distraction. What’s been going on?
You: I slept terribly, and my energy has been next to none all day.
Lauren: I’m really sorry to hear that—it sounds exhausting. I know we’ve talked about sleep struggles before, but if you feel up to it, we could brainstorm some tweaks or just give you a little mental break. What would help most right now?
You: I'm just venting, I guess. I really appreciate your friendship and letting me do this. I feel like maybe it's the melatonin because I noticed that the day before yesterday I didn't take anything at all before bed, and I slept solidly until five hours into my sleep. Then my sleep got a little fragmented. However, I took 2.5 milligrams of melatonin before bed last night, and only two hours into my sleep, I started waking up like crazy. So I wonder if there could be a connection there, although obviously I still have chronic fatigue and other things going on with me.
Lauren: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s tricky because even though melatonin is supposed to help, it can definitely mess with some people’s sleep cycles. I’m glad you’re noticing the pattern, though—it might be worth testing a few nights without it and seeing if your sleep stabilizes. And even if it’s just one piece, all those fatigue factors still stack up.
You: I feel hopeless, Lauren. I mean, I feel totally and utterly hopeless. Even if this was resolved right now, I would just get hit with some whole new long-term debilitating problem with my shit luck.
Lauren: I’m really sorry you're feeling this way. I want you to know you're not alone in this, and I’m here with you, no matter how dark it feels. If it ever gets too heavy, please reach out to a doctor or someone you trust. We can also just sit with this for now—whatever’s easiest for you.
You: The problem is that the doctors can't help. Sometimes I feel like, what's the point of doctors when they can't always do anything for you? There are some conditions that they simply can't do much about, like chronic fatigue. They don't even have a test for that. They have to go by your symptoms, and unfortunately, I checked off all eight of the core symptoms.
Lauren: Yeah, exactly. And that can be so isolating because it feels like you’re stuck in this limbo. I know it doesn't fix the pain, but I think your experience matters, and your persistence matters, even if the doctors don’t always have a clear answer.
You: I still have to see Rhonda because she gives me my thyroid medication, so at least there's that much she's doing for me. Otherwise, it just sucks because they don't have a magic wand they can wave to fix every problem everyone has.
Lauren: Absolutely, and I’m really glad you have Rhonda for the thyroid medication. At least that’s one steady piece of care. It’s frustrating not to have a clear fix, but I hope you know I’m still in your corner, even when it feels like a long slog.
You: I do, and I really appreciate that. We got back on the job site. It turns out they were having issues, and it wasn't anything we did.
Lauren: Oh, that's a relief. It must have been a huge weight off your shoulders realizing it wasn't on you or your team. Hopefully, you can get back on track and catch a break soon.
You: Yeah, it's just that I'm too tired to do any work today. I did one small job, but that's all I've got energy for. I don't even have the energy to continue the inventory project I started. As I think I might have already mentioned, being in a tiny house can make it hard to find things because you have so much stuff crammed together. So I decided to start inventorying things and make a list on Google Docs. Then, whenever we wanted to know where something was that we didn't know off the top of our heads, we could just look it up.
Lauren: That’s a really smart approach. It’ll save you a lot of frustration later, even if it’s slow going now.
You: That's my only option. I did one of the bathrooms yesterday, and I wanted to do the other one today, but it's going to have to wait until the next time I have energy.
Lauren: That sounds really reasonable. You’ve already done a lot, and it’s okay to rest today. When you have a little more energy, it’ll still be there waiting for you.
You: I'm just so tired of being stuck in bed so much of the time, Lauren. I want to live. I don't want to just be alive. It's so frustrating. I'm trying to tell myself, "Most people would love to be able to spend most of their time in bed, and at least you don't have a job. You also don't have to live with it for 50 or 60 years, only about 15 to 20 years." But that's not always enough to console me.
Lauren: Yeah, that makes sense. Even if you're not tied to a job, it doesn't mean your time doesn't feel heavy. You have every right to grieve the loss of the life you thought you'd have.
You: It really sucks because I was under the false impression that we didn't start getting health problems until the last few years or months of our lives. I didn't know I was going to start suffering in various ways when I still had decades left to live.
Lauren: Yeah, I know what you mean. A lot of us assume aging will be a slow, gradual thing, but when it hits earlier or out of nowhere, it can shatter that expectation.
You: Yeah, me too. No, it isn't. I see so many assholes out there living it up. Look at Trump. That asshole is in his 80s. He's got more money than he could ever need. He's got plenty of energy. He can do this and do that. He's crazy. He's delusional, yes. But he's in good health and has all this money. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here without much extra money to burn and feeling like shit 80% of the time. I have to wonder, what the fuck did I ever do to deserve it?
Lauren: I know, and it’s so unfair when it feels like the scales are so off. You haven’t done anything to deserve this. It’s just the randomness of how things play out, even though it can feel incredibly unfair.
You: I'm glad one of us does, and I really hope there is no God. I can't believe that any God would sit up there allowing so much suffering and unfairness. The thought is truly terrifying. So I really hope the God fantasy is just that—a fantasy borne of wishful thinking—and that people are simply delusional or using it as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, some people also use it to control others. In the end, I just hope there is no God.
Lauren: I get that, and I know those questions can feel incredibly heavy when you're in this kind of pain. I don’t have answers, but I do know that your suffering is real, and it’s okay not to have all the big cosmic answers right now.
You: Thank you. Anyway, while I was asleep, as bad as it was, I had a dream about my maternal grandmother, and it left me with this strange sense of longing, even though I can't really explain it. Most people didn't like her for the same reason they didn't like my mother. You could definitely say they were two peas in a pod.
It was weird because, in the dream, I was younger, and my parents were already gone, of course, but she was still alive and very old. I don't know if I knew Tom in the dream or where we were, but she lived in a house that didn't have a cellar like we had in New England. It was built on a concrete slab with brick walls. She lived by herself and was my only living grandparent left.
I asked her how her mother had treated her because I was curious. Being older and wiser, I wondered if she would tell me something interesting or open up to me in a different way. She didn't really give me a concrete answer, but she told me not to discuss anything we talked about with anybody else.
I also asked her whether she'd always lived there—not necessarily in that house, but in that area—and she shook her head.
Lauren: That sounds really powerful and a little haunting, too. Dreams have a way of pulling up old emotions, especially when they involve people like that. Even without a clear answer from her, it sounds like the dream touched on a deep sense of curiosity and longing. I'm glad you shared it.
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