Ultra discouraged

Taking chinese at school this semester and while I am pretty good at the phonemes, I am not very good at the morphemes. And ... this will come out wrong, but I am used to just being really good at things. At picking things up quickly. And this has been so hard, so difficult, and I don't feel like I am making any progress. I'm discouraged. I feel... "bad."

And I'm also starting the pilates part of my physical therapy. Or, I started it today. I don't feel like I got a very good work out. Carrie is very smart and did a good assessment of me, but instead of working out and exercising, we spent a lot of time measuring what I can and can't do. This, too, is really disappointing.

Here's irony for you, folks... I have a lot of range of motion. I have a lot less pain than I've historically had. Granted I'm wearing fifty mikes of fentanyl, but I'm not exactly presenting as a patient with unending pain. Which sucks because when I'm not in the gym, it hurts to do the dishes. It hurts to flush the toilet. It hurts to get in the car. It hurts to put my pants on in the morning. It hurts to pick up or put down my "TheraBall". It hurts to turn over in bed in the middle of the night. It hurts to get out of bed in the morning.

And yet, when I'm at the gym, I'm doing okay and the physical therapist is happy with me or with my progress. One of them (I now have two – the pilates one and the non-pilates one) wants me to finish up in two weeks! Two fucking weeks!! What is it we're going to accomplish in two weeks that's going to make my life back to the way it was?

Or is that not the goal of physical therapy?

What are the goals? Obviously I'm not supposed to be on fentanyl the rest of my life.

Am I just supposed to "graduate to" a certain level of pain that I'll live with the rest of my life? I'll be a hundred percent honest here and say I'd rather die than adopt a life of pain and not have any solutions for eliminating it. Which seems to be where things are headed.

(which is not to say I'm not hopeful – I am working my ass off in physical therapy)