Sometimes I’m grateful for the lessons my hardships have brought. I’m grateful for the inner strength I was shown I possess, and for the self-awareness my suffering has helped me develop. If you look hard enough, you can usually find something positive born from tragedy, however small. And gratitude for life’s blessings is important in this tumultuous world.

Other times, however, I want to say “fuck all that” and tell life to go fuck itself.

Let me clarify that I am EVER SO GRATEFUL I’m no longer in the throes of acute flox symptoms like near-constant neuropathy, brain fog, headaches, and excessive food and chemical sensitivities. That was the worst experience of my life, and the very definition of hell on earth. I’m glad it appears to be over.

However, life, can you please fuck off with the random ailments, already? Besides the intermittent facial pain I described here, I also have varying degrees of nasal allergies/sinus problems, mild insomnia, joint pain, blepharitis, dry eyes, and sometimes my glands swell up for no apparent fucking reason. (But they always go back to normal, so I guess I’m not going to die from whatever is causing it.) I also have some random ass problem, possible TMJ disorder, malocclusion, and other dental issues. I’m sure there are more ailments I’m forgetting at the moment.

Besides health, here are some other reasons life can go fuck itself – that it’s nothing more than an exercise in irony and psychological torture. Such as:

I love cats and have had cats for almost my entire life. Now I’m allergic to cats and can’t enjoy their company anymore.

I am quiet and peaceful, but surrounded by noise at work and at home. I just cannot get away from it. Adding insult to injury, when I wear earplugs to block out my neighbors noise so I can fucking sleep (when I don’t have insomnia, that is), I am then made keenly aware of my tinnitus, which is mostly in my left ear for some unknown goddamn reason. Yes, I’ve been to the doctor. The answer to my ear woes is “maybe allergies”. Because they itch, too, just like my eyes.

Next up: food. No, I don’t get intense migraines, brain fog, neuropathy, or body pain after eating certain foods anymore. Thank god. That was another version of hell – the lack of ability to feed myself without becoming acutely ill. But sometimes I still get mild versions of those ailments, or I get things like sneezing episodes after eating. I still have to be careful.

Sick of the constant food diligence bullshit, I recently told my gluten issue to go fuck itself. I then discovered that sometimes I feel fine eating gluten, while other times I pay with diarrhea and stomach pain. And I think it might play a role in those ass woes I mentioned earlier…but I’m not sure. So I’m not debilitated by food sensitivities anymore, but they still bother me to a degree.

My point? Before Cipro fucked me up, I was adventurous with food. I would eat almost anything. I loved tasting different foods and drinks, and would get so excited browsing grocery aisles or restaurant menus for something exotic to try as a little treat for myself. Now, even though I can tolerate more than I could 5 years ago, I can’t eat or drink anything I want with wild abandon without fear of health repercussions. I can’t just relax and enjoy food and drink…or any fucking thing, it seems. This is yet another instance, besides the cat thing, of life limiting or taking away what I love.

(Also, I’m sick of merely TOLERATING things. I want to ENJOY them without worry like many lucky people get to do in their lives – people who have no idea how lucky they actually are.)

Now I’m thinking of this brain meme I found a couple years ago. (Is that what these things are called? God, I feel old.)

This one:

That’s what it feels like life is doing to me sometimes.

Love cats? Become allergic in adulthood and never have a cat again.

Love silence? Forced to live and work with excessive noise.

Finally (mostly) overcome floxing and MCS? Can’t enjoy it because of lingering, apparently untreatable ailments.

And I can’t throw money at these problems to, for instance, find a new place to live or go to doctors for allergy testing & treatment, because my job doesn’t pay enough.

Oh, that reminds me:

Hate your job? Steadily become more and more busy until you feel like that frog who has no idea he’s slowly boiling to death in that pot of water, then have no energy to seek additional skills during nights and weekends to find another job.

Yeah…Fuck you, life.

That wasn’t even all of it. Here are a couple more:

Acquire health problems? Get the ones no one has heard of or believes in so you get a mental illness label instead of help and compassion.

Love to write and create things? No free time, or if you do get free time, you’re either too sick or too tired.

Oh, and blepharitis? That eye condition I mentioned earlier? Is made worse by crying. Guess what people do when life dishes out neverending, stressful, troublesome bullshit? Yeah. They cry. Then their eyes feel worse. Then they cry some more because their eyes feel awful. Then their eyes feel EVEN worse, triggering MORE urges to cry, which they must then fight, so they won’t spend the next day in utter misery, fantasizing about gouging their own eyes out while working their noisy, shitty-assed job.

I mean, really? AM I in hell??? GAAAAHHHH. I’m sick of this shit.

I realize many people have significantly worse problems than I do, but that doesn’t diminish my right to be dissatisfied with the unpleasant and somewhat cruelly ironic aspects of my own life, does it? No, it fucking doesn’t. Because it feels like life has given me small tastes of its various comforts and pleasures, only to take them away and say, “No, you can’t actually have that. But first you can feel how much you love it before I take it away, then make your life not too torturous, but JUST HARD ENOUGH so you can never relax and fully enjoy it.”

I resent the fuck out of that, too.

When I start to resent it, I’ll sometimes have a pity party and think things like “Why can’t people like my boyfriend’s ex-wife get food allergies instead of me? She has the palate of an eight year old, so food allergies would hardly even impact her diet.” Or “Why can’t I have a health problem mainstream medicine acknowledges, so I can get ribbons and charity walks and attention instead of being shunned by society?”

Do you realize how fucked up it is to envy another’s illness? Not to mention, these are just poisonous thoughts in general. They’re counterproductive, and they help no one. They need to go. (But I’m only human, so first I need to forgive myself for having them, I suppose.)

Plus, fuck society. Whoever treats me like I’m crazy instead of sick can go fuck themselves.

God, I’m in a terrible mood.

Also, I’m tired of grasping for things to be grateful for in order to offset my difficulties. I’m tired of looking for little things to keep me clinging to this sometimes shitty life. Things like, “Oh, that flower is so beautiful. I’m glad I’m alive to see it. I guess the world isn’t entirely a cesspool of shit after all.” I had those types of thoughts back when I was suffering so badly I was fighting suicidal urges. As ridiculous as it sounds, they helped.

They don’t help much anymore. I’m tired of having to appreciate a goddamn sunset just to make living more bearable. I don’t want noticing random beauty to be my only joy…I want to find joy in GRABBING LIFE AND LIVING THE FUCK OUT OF IT. But how do I do that when I still struggle, and all these things seem to hold me back? When I can’t figure out how? I don’t know, and I’m sick of constantly wondering but never finding the answer.

Sigh. Life is hard, and sometimes I’d really like a break. Once again, I find myself hoping for some glorious afterlife to look forward to after I drop dead. Not one in which some guy saves his favorite people but banishes others to eternal suffering. I’m talking about an afterlife of joy and love and peace for everyone – even the fuckups of the world. A resting place along our journey, until we move on to whatever happens next. I think it exists, but of course I won’t know for sure until I get there…unless everything will simply be snuffed out with my last breath. But I don’t think that’s how it’s going to go. I think I’m going to learn what this crazy bullshit on earth was all about, and stop telling life to go fuck itself.

Maybe if I try hard enough, I can learn to stop saying it while I’m still here. But first I have to wait for my (probably delusional) optimism to return, because that shit has left the building.