Today my story is being heard by one of the doctors at the Norman Endocrine Clinic in Florida. This is the last, best, and only hope for a cure to my disease. I've spent time and energy over the last few months gathering up all my records and filling out forms and writing a personal history and making trips to the post office. This work came to an end yesterday when I called the billing clerk and gave her my credit card number, authorizing the twelve hundred dollar out-of-pocket fee for which I am owed today's attention.

Praying is something you do when you want to do something but there is nothing you can do.

What will the verdict be? I am hoping that they say they are willing to attempt a second surgery, because this would mean I have a choice. Otherwise: I can hardly bear to think of it. I am so tired of feeling this way. Maybe without the spectre of a possible successful intercession I would find a way to make peace with it, go back to treating it symptomatically with various chemical substances, work harder at dispelling the multitudes of unhealthy thinking habits I've grown up around the pain in the effort to afford myself a little shelter.

Soon I will know which path I am on. In any case it will be a new path, and I will be grateful for the change. Still, I can't escape the sense of futility in trying to find solace in thinking differently. I am tired of this life, tired of not fitting in, of needing so much more than anyone else, of wanting to connect but being too afraid to make myself vulnerable. It seems I am only happy when I am doing things that are not healthy, with the sole exception of exercising my creativity. Not even in sleep do I find peace.

If only I could find a different self to center myself around. Perhaps if I am to feel this way for the rest of my life I should become a religious martyr. When I am at my worst I find myself wishing that I was living in the midst of the French revolution, or some other dangerous, righteous situation where I could easily give my life for noble causes.