After spending the remainder of Pain Doc Day reclined in my chair snoozing and sipping beer, I made my usual mistake of feeling up to challenges. It was a bad evening but I slept and recovered. The trick is to remember that I am recovering in the short term and not for the rest of my life. I couldn't tell you which mistake I will make but I will do something and crash back down. It might be something as simple as next month's Pain Doc Day. My body is not ready to try the fast lane. I'm barely up to the bicycle lane and there is no shame in it. For me, the change of seasons especially entering Spring and Fall are traumatic.
The pain is making it all but impossible to write so I'm going to lie back down.
Time passes again and my nose is back to the old grindstone so to speak. Call it a short session. We're still entering Fall here in Delaware with daytime temperatures in the 80s throwing everything off. I've been so eager for October to arrive that it is difficult to remember it is early or possibly mid-October. I can remember being cold at night in September but that was during my camping days. Call it chilled and not cold because I found it pleasant. A cup of hot chocolate before getting into my sleeping bag seemed to fix anything.
It will be important to pace myself this October for the Pearl Jam concert, my birthday, my wedding anniversary. Other events include the release of Pearl Jam's new album just days before the concert, the new Donaldson book coming out on Tuesday and the New York trip that will come at the very end of the month. Call it four years since the last time I saw Pearl Jam play and we all know how that show stood out from other events. There had been a New York trip then as well but I'm less worried. On one hand, it will be the first time I've left the state since the house has been my legal responsibility yet potential problems are a minor issue compared to the betrayal I faced before.
It's so much easier to contemplate life when I'm not terrified of being forced into a war I didn't truly want to win. No, I don't want to head down that path. I pretty much have to go there to discuss why I'm happier now in worse physical pain and in a house that I just cannot seem to get fixed. When I was worried about being in horrible pain this morning, Melissa made helpful suggestions instead of making it out to be some sort of character flaw. I have too many bad memories of plans hampered by "don't you think?" style suggestions. I am not an idiot. If I thought that, I would act on it. Since "don't you think" was usually followed by a suggestion of losing weight or exercising through the pain or something else designed to make me feel bad, the silence is so much easier.
Worst of all, I'd heard them so many times that they colonized my own brain. I would sit down at the computer to write something and the thought that I should be doing something worthwhile instead just popped up like something from "Pop Up Video." The little thought balloons would interrupt a perfectly good music video with trivia that usually had little to do with the song. Even if you closed your eyes, the little popping sound was just intrusive enough. Probably the only thing worse than having my parents believing my writing was worthless was having the idea start to rub off on me.
I can only imagine how they would dismiss my current concept. Managing a chronic illness is a full-time job. Thanks to concepts born in the New Deal , it is a sort of paid full-time job. Obviously, it's more of a side benefit to hitting the shit lottery but a benefit is a benefit. Hard to believe how much time I wasted trying not to be sick. That sentence isn't quite right. We should all try to not be sick but there are some things that cannot be helped. No matter how hard I try, I cannot go back in time to correct a genetic abnormality which would prevent 25 years of slowly accumulating brain damage any more than I can ignore the effects.
If only I could have a conversation with Stephen R. Donaldson about all this. I would hope he'd be at least amused at his influence on my life. Avoiding despair began with accepting that some things - a lot of things in truth - are beyond my power to change. I cannot change the way I feel so I have learned to find things I could do within my limits. I can write about what pain does to me. It's not about earning my oxygen anymore. It's about finding value in a limited life. Avoiding despair is about learning what you can do, doing it and being satisfied with your efforts.
It's also about finding the beauty and pleasure in things. Life became a much more interesting place when I learned that ale didn't have to taste like the watered down junk marketed here in the US as premium lagers. Beers, even lagers, didn't have to be all about getting drunk. Yes, there is a strong element of feeling less pain and feeling less self conscious in my enjoyment of alcohol but it has to taste good. Life became more interesting when I let Melissa talk me into trying pumpkin pie. I used to be a little afraid of pumpkin pie because I believed it was made from the gooey stuff inside pumpkins. It is one of my favorite desserts now because it contains cinnamon and clove and so many different flavors.
My life is actually better in some ways because of things I tried in response to being sick. I used to live at a "kick in the door against any perceived barrier in life and then try to kick myself in the rear after anything but absolute success" pace. I learned to ask for help and to lean on those willing to offer it. For the longest time, I felt like the weakest person in the world even when I accomplished some good things. My greatest strength has always come from friends and loved ones. Before I got sick, I used to waste way too much time trying to be stronger than that. I know better now. One great cure for despair is knowing that you don't have to do it yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment