While I can't be in your specific shoes here, I'm gonna try. I am facing a future where sitting down and standing up and independent self care will become increasingly more difficult. Where lifting anything over ten pounds will have increasingly bad consequences, where bending, squatting, twisting or reaching create physical risk, where my spine continues to slowly degenerate etc....
The last two sentences of your post perfectly describe my physical situation. Combined with my SSDI wait my future until their decision comes down is more pain, more despair, more begging to exist on the very fringe of "decent" living. your last sentence is one I've grown quite familiar with in this last 2 years.
My Good morning my DU family posts are very much a form of therapy for me as well as being my wish to positively impact you (DU readers). That therapy accomplishes two things every day for me,
1. It creates a positive start to every single day for me, by force some days lol.
2. Because this day started well, it is now worth fighting for.
It creates real impetus and meaning for the first of the two sentences because that's the one that needs it. It's easy to sink, it requires zero effort but to fight for that extra time, those extra moments, that dream that's still within reach, that requires........you know what.
I'm really sorry if this was out of bounds, I meant every word in love. I responded only because of the dichotomy that exists in simultaneously clinging to realistic hope while struggling with the despair that can overwhelm any given moment.
Your fellow traveler on difficult roads,
John