The Elephant in the Room

(I wrote most of this on Tuesday, April 1st, when I discovered the problem but decided to hold off posting until I had resolved the problem on my own. The point was that I was writing about money and chronic pain not trying to beg money from anyone. I figured that this would be much clearer on payday after I had paid the bill in question.)

There are a few reasons why I never write about money here. One of them is the relatively good luck we've enjoyed over the last two year period. I'm broke at the moment beyond a small amount of savings that will go to medical stuff but the good news is that this condition will last a total of three days. In the bad old days, I can remember six month periods where we had to ration everything to make it two weeks so that we could resupply for two more weeks of tight rationing. That's not the case here. The only reason I noticed this hiccup is because I tried to pay the annual sewer bill and my check of the bank balance revealed that I couldn't. The bill is due Monday and we get paid on Friday by direct deposit so this is no crisis.

Another reason why I don't write about money is that money woes have such a simple solution. One of you kind souls could help me out and I can't even finish that sentence. We're all in the same boat here and a lot of us take on water from time to time. I won't ask you to prioritize my needs right there beside your own. That sort of request leads to the guilt I feel whenever one of the many charities or political organizations I'd like to support gives me a call. As for a random internet person with unmet needs, that has its own dangers. You just have to remember good old what's her name. You remember the brave girl who wrote about her struggles on the 'net and received gifts galore. If you don't remember her the way I don't remember her, there's a good reason for it. She never existed. An adult woman with no kids wanted attention and started writing in this persona of this brave girl. People sent her gifts for the daughter totaling thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I can't remember which it was but it was all fraud. When people wanted to meet the brave daughter, she succumbed to whatever disease she supposedly had.The FBI closed in but I don't remember what happened to her. I'm real, I have limits and I have to live up to those limits.

One good example is pain control. I hurt a lot and I hurt all the time. If I had my way, I would spend more than the annual budget for the state of Delaware (I live here. I'm not picking on my home state.) on various methods of pain control and distractions to help me ignore the pain. It's a bottomless need and I'm not proud of that but I live according to my limits and not these wants or needs. There may come a time when I screw something up badly enough that I must ask friends and family for help but I'm trying to avoid that. It's the sorta card that you can only play once so it had better be life or death when you do.

Okay. That was a bit stern of me. If you are me, it had better be life or death if I play the, "help me because I'm sick" card. If you are someone else like everyone else in the world, you can set your own limits. I assure you that I don't wait for matters to reach the life or death plateau before I try to get help for my beloved but I also don't attempt general fundraising with her needs either. She has her own support group of very good people like I do but there are two differences. The first is that she's my beloved and, as such, the most important person in the world. Secondly, she doesn't have the combination of bottomless need and learned helplessness that I get from being in my 15th year of chronic pain.

In truth, I will never turn down an offer of help freely given except perhaps as an attempt to be polite. There is just so much need and so few resources to meet it. I live in a neighborhood with a dumpster instead of curbside trash pickup. This comes from privatization of such services. Private companies like "one size fits all" solutions except when dealing with those rich enough to afford personal service. In absolute terms, things could be much worse. Some people in this neighborhood live half a mile from the dumpster as the crow flies. I cannot walk out to the dumpster from where I am so I guess the additional distance wouldn't matter but someone always tells me that things could be worse when I complain. Umm...duh!  Things can always be worse. That said, I lack the resources to get the trash I produce to the dumpster on a regular basis. If I had enough resources, there would be a way to deal with the problem. I do not and such is life. Sometimes, this leads to what you might call Third World conditions here. If people were to link this problem to me where I live, the response would not be help. I figure that someone would try to fine me.

Money is the elephant in the room because I could never have enough so there's no point in complaining about it. I suppose my entire life is based on a pain control model. My doctors can't take all my pain away without killing me so I take what I can get and work on ignoring the rest. I can't deal with the problems in my life in a satisfactory matter so I lower my expectations. I woke up early today in pain because it was raining overnight. I'll be in pain later because it's raining or because a change in barometric pressure will force the rain away. The results tend to be the same so I change the rules to make surviving a win and being able to write about it a big win.

It doesn't seem likely but someone could give me the help I need tomorrow. There could be a medical breakthrough or someone in the homeowners' association could decide that we need curbside service and a parking lot. The point is to live through today because tomorrow is always different.