u/ElectronicAd5847

I don't mean life-affirming or inspiring but something that really cuts through the noise and shows there's still some meaning and good in it all without false promises or toxic positivity (if that makes sense). Would love some fiction options but open to anything.

I've been really sick and bedbound for the past year (almost always alone and often in pain and discomfort) and have been dealing with so much bullshit on interpersonal, medical, societal levels re: my illness that I've started feeling like everyone and everything is bullshit and everything everyone says is bullshit. I'm angry and I really hate the world and people right now, and that's never been me before. I can't remember a time before this when I didn't want to believe the best in people.

TLDR: my brother's being evil about this illness that's destroying me and my life and the destruction is the same reason I feel like I can't accept what I can't change

I know I can't change his mind because he's completely locked into this whole conspiracy theory he's decided on, but I still keep trying. All it does is hurt me more and probably makes him bite down even harder, but I don't know how to let it go and accept that he believes such completely cruel and untrue things about this thing that's destroying my life. He says such unbelievable, vile things.

I have nieces and nephews who I've been having an increasingly hard time connecting to since I stopped being able to FaceTime them regularly and visit at all. (Having a hard time wanting to keep up with people in general lately.) They're all under 12, and I swore I was going to have real relationships to them all, but then I got COVID visiting them and more than 3 years later I've been bedbound for a year. It matters that at some point that they understand that my illness is real and debilitating. He says he never speaks about me to them.

I tried to ask my sister in law what I should do and whether she thought he'd ever come around, but she sent me a reply that sounded like a 1950s housewife about not wanting to talk out of place (because he's a fucking tyrant.)

I keep thinking "this wouldn't matter to me if my own life was okay" but of course this wouldn't be happening if my life was okay. As it is, I feel like I have to accept all of the horrible things people say to me about my illness because I can't stand any more loss. I want to matter.

TLDR: it's so painful to remember that this person who feels like a character in a book or a long lost friend whose face is blurry in my memory really once existed, and she was me

This all came on because I found a poem I wrote in 2020 for my ex when we were deeply in love. I remembered writing it, but it felt like reading someone else's work. I remember the giddiness of planning the surprise and giving it to her, driving her through a field of sunflowers while she stood up out of the sunroof to belt the song on the radio with arms up, having and using and not even thinking about the freedom of my body (even with chronic pain already) in so many ways, connecting to people deeply, feeling true joy and contentment, looking forward to the years ahead, feeling understood and wanted and loved and cared for, providing those things in turn, making a whole room of people laugh, really showing up for people, truly helping, reciprocity, reliability, independence, potential, hope, the future one big "wide open space" (like in The Chicks song.)

I miss showing people my work and reading others' work and the excitement about my future and plans and my friends' futures and plans, but I mostly miss the person I was when I was in love or just surrounded by and giving lots of love and had a cat and takeout routines and felt any sense of belonging, direction, purpose, meaning, even if some of it was borrowed (because I was young even though I felt old.) I've lost it all and so much more.

I used to be so hard on that girl all the time, but now that she's gone I realize how much I really liked her despite all the things I wished I could change about her, how many things she did well, how much life she had in her to live and even more spilling over to give others. She had so much promise, it was like a constant electric current she never noticed because it had always been there, even through and after many bad things happening. I just really miss that girl. She was very complicated and imperfect, but I loved her. I have no sense in my body that she once lived here at all.

I miss all of my old dreams, the biggest stuff of all, and I miss the tiny routines and habits and hobbies and the millions of pieces of myself that I can't access or enact anymore. I'm barely an aunt now (just in title), barely a friend or family member, not a community organizer or a volunteer. I haven't spoken a language very dear to me/my family in years, I'm not writing or working towards publishing my work, I'm not becoming an academic or working on farms or finding a partner and a family or traveling or pursuing any of the potential lives I briefly touched before they dissolved. Even when horrible things happened to me, I was still me. Nothing ever erased me like this illness has erased me.

It's so painful to try and really put myself back into the mind I had when I was in college, especially before the pandemic started. It really does feel like I'm in the apocalypse and none of the good that belonged to the old world survives.

I'm so, so lonely and filled with so much grief all the time. I've been really disassociated these past few weeks and am trying to reconnect with people and catch up on things I need to do, but I keep crying because I'm afraid this huge gulf between me and everyone else will only keep growing and the loneliness and grief will only get worse with time.

I have hope and believe things can get better for me in the long run (with this illness/in general), but I don't know how to be present in my life right now without also feeling this constant, horrible fear about the loneliness/grief getting worse.

I want to feel connected and understood and not alone. I know I can't fix anything right now or maybe even this year. I just wish I was on the other side of it all.