The Sunken Place
One thing about being chronically ill that has wreaked havoc on my mental health is that it constantly feels like “meaningless” obstacles in day-to-day life feel immensely more impactful. This is, to me, because after countless involuntary rides on the “how can this day get worse” merry-go-round, you ultimately unlock a secret level of devastation. A special level reserved just for losses that to anyone else would be a few minutes of dwelling upon, but for me, is enough to ruin the entire day. Or week. For me today, it was my heating pad breaking at 1 in the morning. To the average Joe, this may have been a “sigh, there goes 40 bucks” moment. But for me, who spends the majority of my time in bed, this was catastrophic. Of course, the initial desperate CPR of the heating pad- Come on, hold on, don’t leave me!!! But after those initial attempts turned into 15 minutes of squatting in the dark with my iPhone flashlight, I had to succumb to the cruelty of my reality. That's my “safe sp...