Uselessness, Limitless.

I have always been a Type "A" personality, driven, a perfectionist, a workaholic, a control freak. Even around the house, if something needed to be done, I wanted to do it. If I didn't know how, I would learn. I could do carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, even interior design, and I could do it better than anyone else, so I wouldn't hire someone else to do it.
It's all different now. Cancer has taken so much away from me. The combination of chronic pain from bone mets, side effects of pain meds, major fatigue from advancing cancer, etc. has made it almost impossible to do anything. Not that I have lost the knowledge or the ability, but the bending, stretching, hammering, etc. will wear me out as if I ran a marathon and send my pain level through the roof. So I have to hire people and rely on friends and my daughter's wonderful boyfriend to do the "heavy lifting", including cutting grass, shoveling snow, moving furniture, etc. I sleep, sit in my special recliner, read, write, and feel incredibly useless.
I can't help it. It is so hard on me to be not working and to rely on others so much. I have so few hours of "productive time" in the day, that I always feel like I'm behind, that there's so much left to do. I'm sure that some of that comes from my sense of limited time and some of it from the anxiety I live with. So I can't do much and I feel guilty along with the uselessness.
But of course, none of this is my fault, as Dianne continues to tell me. I'm not lazy. Its just such a contrast from the way I used to be. But it's one more thing, one more loss that I have to shoulder and that I hate. Thankfully, I can still use my brain (when I'm not sleeping) and I can read and write. And as long as I can do that, I can be productive, useful, hopefully helpful. As long as I am alive, I can fling my thoughts and ideas out into the insatiable vortex of the Internet. And each time I do that, I am leaving more of a legacy and hopefully have an impact on more people.
In that sense, I am limitless!