Joanna Jeanine’s Diary Entry #7

I woke up today feeling weighed down by a kind of sadness I can’t get rid of. It isn’t just being sad—more like this deep, listless dissatisfaction that keeps running under everything. I find myself so tired and so worn through by this stupid disease. Multiple sclerosis is gnawing at me—not just my body, though losing so much of my mobility hurts every single day—but at my sense of self. It’s like MS is killing me inch by inch, not always physically, but with this persistent, gnawing frustration. I’m not who I was. I miss walking, not just to get somewhere, but for the sake of moving, feeling free, feeling capable. I loathe sitting here, becoming someone who depends on others. It chips away at my independence, and with every bit that falls off, I feel myself fading. Trying to distract my mind, I’ve thrown myself into books. Lately, it’s been Philipp Mainländer. What a fascinating and tragic figure—so brilliant, but so tormented. His writing, his ideas, are like a storm: intense, churning, restless. Reading him is like being inside the mind of someone who sees every flaw in existence and can’t look away. It’s such a shame—no, it’s infuriating, really—that he ended his own life so young. I can’t help but feel we’ve lost someone who could have been one of the greats, someone who might have changed the landscape of philosophy if he’d endured a little longer. People love to say that his philosophy led him to his tragic end, that his ideas were his undoing. Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But to me, it feels like such a waste of intellect, of diligence, of a mind that wouldn’t stop probing and searching. It’s hard not to draw some parallels to how I feel on days like this, the sense of frustration, the fatigue, the endless wrestling with things I didn’t choose. It reminds me how fragile even the strongest minds can be. I wish I had a sense of hope today, or something wiser to write, but I just don’t. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up in a better place. For now, it’s one more page turned in a heavy book, one more day lived in a body I hardly recognize.