Me, Chiari and God (Holy Combo Meal, Batman!)

Thank God it's stopped raining for now! While other people are doing year end reviews and things like that, I have trouble thinking past tomorrow and I'll admit it. Will I hurt as badly today and will I sleep all day? Melissa is working night shift on New Year's Eve so it will be difficult for her to get back in time. No partying for us. If I drink, it will be a desperate attempt to control pain. I hurt now and I had all my rationed medicine for Monday, December 30 so it's alcohol or nothing. Nothing will be my starter plan but I think a very weak rum and Diet Pepsi would let me sleep most of the day.

New Year's Eve is a good time to write about big topics and I've saved faith in God through chronic pain. I believe in God but I'm not sure I should say it's in spite of or because of the trials in my life. I spent a lot of time in therapy and one thing that I learned is that my most valued skills come from my experience with the bad things in life. I can put myself in the place of most people out there and empathize with their motives. Don't misunderstand. I do not agree with the decisions people make to commit violent crimes. I have experienced some of those same motivations and made better decisions. Is pain just another lesson I'm learning so that I can place my hand very gently on someone's shoulder and tell them that it's okay to spend some time now and again wailing about how unfair it all is.

When I'm having one of my worst moments, it is rare that I blame God. God and I have our own personal relationship that I don't expect you to understand. We have all sorts of chats in my head so I spend very little time in formal prayer. When I do, I thank God for the blessings I do have, ask forgiveness for my sins and ask that I be given admittance to heaven when my time comes. I tell people that I will pray for them or keep them in my prayers all the time and some of them probably believe that I have a list at the end of my formal prayers when I ask God to bless the list of people. I can't do that because it's inevitable that I will leave someone off. I also do not ask him to cure me of Chiari and pain.

The truth is that I do not understand God intellectually. If I start listing all of the arguments against his existence, I'm bound to have an agnostic moment. Instead of asking why over and over, I chalk it all up to mysteries that I'm not supposed to be able to understand. Faith is the greatest mystery in the world. It makes no sense whatsoever and yet I jump in over and over. There's a prayer I've heard where someone asks for a simple man's faith but I'm not a simple man. I was blessed with the double edged sword of intelligence. I don't ask God to help me feel better medically because that's what doctors are for. There's one main exception to this rule and that's the black moods I get in the middle of the night. I made a promise to God that I would live as long as he chooses and God makes time pass so those black moods always pass as well.

I've been accused of dodging questions once or twice in my life and this is a classic case of a good chance to dodge. I can't do it this time because I write this blog to help educate people about dealing with chronic pain and other symptoms. Crises of faith are just another part of that. It's just another symptom. So, ask me how I mix God, the ultimate force of love and healing, with this awful condition that hurts so much?

The truth is that I don't mix Chiari and God. I take the entire state of being known as my life and look for God in that. Once upon a time, I was relatively healthy and utterly miserable. I was surrounded on all sides by cruelty and I wanted nothing more than to return that cruelty with interest where much of my world was concerned. I didn't believe that I was capable of adding anything good to this world. One day, I found myself treated with kindness and respect by a young woman. Absorbing that kindness changed me. I didn't understand it at all for a long time but I absorbed it and decided to treat people around me with different variations on what I had learned. Even bullies gave up or found larger people offering to show them what being bullied is like if they didn't stop. They stopped.

That young woman also showed me ways of avoiding mistreatment without resorting to hostility. I wanted to stop time right there and spend eternity being appreciated but God had other people ahead who would show me various forms of love. Finally, I met Melissa and she loved me as completely as I love her. Only Melissa was going to be able to stand by my side as an equal and help me deal with the greatest crises of my life. How could I deal with the abuse of having a family who didn't like me at all. They wanted to mold me into some sort of copy of them sending me to the bullying school in hope that I would become a better clone there. I was just lucky that the faculty and staff at the bullying school was so good. Most of the teachers there offered small pockets of the freedom to try myself.

Melissa got me away from the constant disapproval physically. I moved away and learned to live without the reinforcement of always feeling inadequate. She challenges the issues that stick to me. When I realized that pain management is a full time job, I had this nagging feeling that I was a failure for giving up. Melissa helped me trust my instincts that moving on isn't giving up.

So, how do God and Chiari mix? Chiari is a small part of my very blessed life and it is one of the worst parts. I'm lucky enough to be living the dream along with the nightmare. I'm happily married with three young daughters who happen to be cats. We have a roof over our heads due to my parents' very complex love for me even though they can't stand me. Thanks to our insurance company, we have ceilings and proper floors again. Chances are that I'll be thanking God for the chance to indulge in that man made miracle combination of booze and good music.

There are days when the bad in my life seems to blot out the good. Chances are that I will be crushed by pain soon since I have written so much. (There's a fiction project growing in another window.) This blog is proof that it's okay to grumble on the days with more pain than usual so I will if it comes to that. I got to celebrate through my art and that is a joy.

Have the best New Year you can have, guys.

Sorting Things Out

I am adjusting to life again after time spent hurting as much as I ever have before. There was nothing I could do about it except sleep when I could and knock myself out as close to unconscious as I could when I couldn't sleep. Pain medication wasn't doing much of anything in the wake of weather that went from unseasonably warm to snow straight to a shockingly warm spell. While everyone I knew except Melissa enjoyed this bout of "good weather," I couldn't even be grouchy about it through the pain. Now, I feel well enough for boredom to have set in again but it doesn't take that much. I bore easily.

There is fear mixed in the boredom, of course. I'm no stranger to pain. In fact, a normal day involves a few hours of pain only made bearable through some scary narcotics. This was something different that I am still trying to understand. The pain at the hotel and just as I got home was the pain of exhaustion. I needed rest and I needed sleep of the in bed variety which I resist because of its unpleasant side effects. It was very difficult to overcome but then it seemed to stop but it was replaced by a variation of the exhaustion pain where I was either dosing in my chair or doing my best to keep crying out to a minimum.

Last night, I expected to find the agony again but I was greeted by what you might call moderate pain instead. What do you do for moderate pain again? I took my meds and rested but was awake almost all day. When I tried to sleep, I was confronted with dreams that had the frantic pace of nightmares but with details that seemed pleasant at the time. These dreams involved joining very intense organizations with very enthusiastic people. These people were so intense that they were carrying me along much of the time in the literal sense but they could not see how I was holding them up. Carried along by their enthusiasm, I fought to contribute all I could but then I felt restrained. The dream decided that I was late meeting up with my father who was driving me home to his house.

After enduring lectures on my poor performance, I was told that I had kept an old friend waiting so long that there would be time for nothing more than a hello. In truth, I barely caught a glimpse of her and not enough to decide who she was. Strangely, I retained the image after waking and realized that she was no one. In the rush to make me feel as guilty as possible, my brain might have combined some facial features of two people whom I would enjoy seeing. Then again, the truth is that I know both of them are safe and reasonably happy so there was no desperation or heartache involved. The problem was that I figured out the sensation of being restrained quickly. Madeline and Meekers spent most of the night pinning me to the chair so I had to go through several more rounds of the dream before I just about shouted a command that they will follow from time to time if I'm emphatic enough. "Everybody out of the pool!"

I might not have felt rested by I was no longer crushed by exhaustion so I ate a meal. Melissa made one of her amazing hams for Christmas dinner but I was much too sick that night to eat much. It's been that way pretty much straight through since my previous entry but this was a meal that both tasted good and I was able to finish. I'd like to claim that it was balanced but the best I can say is that I got up to get my own plate and that this meal consisted of ham with a simple version of Melissa's macaroni and cheese. It had diced tomatoes in it which happen to be a fruit.

This strength is fading without me doing more than showering and writing a couple of pages on the Zephyr project. It took one of my last two cups of coffee to get me to this point in the first place. As much as I prefer the neatness of the K-Cup system, I miss the utility of the pot of coffee that strengthened as it sat out. All I needed to do was heat it up and one coffee making effort could last me for days.

I don't want to go to sleep now. Melissa is home, if sleeping, now and she'll be at work later so that's when I want to sleep. I'd rather sleep later and risk the pain than to miss seeing her off.

It turns out that today is Saturday and not Sunday like I believed when I was grumbling about Melissa's night shift. She is working a mid-shift today. It's also true that today is Saturday and not Friday the way my pill container would indicate. It seems that I failed to take an entire day's worth of meds somewhere in there. My best guess is that it happened during one of the lost days when I slept too much. It could also have been the cause or effect of one of those horrible pain days. I could wear myself out making guesses.

When I learned that Melissa was working a mid-shift instead of a night shift, I was able to stay up to see her off and then I got a couple hours of napping in. I felt refreshed instead of entombed so I continued working on excavating the area around my chair. The process is moving along nicely but there's a sort of frustration inherent in this kinda work. Instead of organizing and paring down the stuff that was packed away for nearly a year, I am merely clearing away the debris from those days of intense pain. Progress is progress and I've learned to take my victories where I can get them. I can't depend on achieving big victories with any regularity

In any case, my body is still sorting itself out after locking down to deal with all the pain. What my body wants is another nap and I'm hoping to give it just that.

Could Be Worse

After two days of almost continuous sleep, I returned from the dead to be greeted by pain. It wasn't horrifying pain. I could hear the voice of some poor well intentioned person telling me that it could be worse. Yes, it could be worse and it isn't so I should be grateful and I am to some degree. The other side of the coin is that it seems as if this is the right time to stop or scale back my emergency pain control measures. I must start being more careful about my use of the liquid anesthesia more commonly known as beer. I never drink bad beer and rarely drink anything in the neighborhood of average so liquid anesthesia isn't cheap.

When things were at their worst in terms of pain, Melissa made sure I had some decent Belgian (or Belgian style) beer on hand. I was suffering on one hand yet the nectar of the gods kept me happy on another. After a while, the pleasant feeling of the alcohol joined the wonderful taste and put the worst of the pain in a place where it felt as if I were experiencing the pain of someone else. It was far from pleasant as if someone I cared about deeply (but not as much as I care for Melissa) was in pain and I felt unhappy about it. This was matched by the guilty feeling known as "better you than me" but the guilt didn't spiral. After all, the pain was mine and the barrier I used against it was a trance thing not an actual transfer of misfortune.

In any case, the reality of it all is that I am sitting here at my desk with a pain cocktail (not a pain control cocktail but a combination of symptoms) of fibromyalgia's muscle burn, the arthritis "bone ache" where it feels as if someone kicked my arms a bunch of times yesterday, the sore joints that feel like they are swollen though they are not yet. I don't have any actual swelling yet. I don't have a sleep deprivation headache despite the fact that I know it is coming. The real pain is coming but, as the joke ran in college, so is Christmas.

Melissa and I have a life that I am determined to live while coping with the pain. We have cats to care for and maintain in a continuous state of "spoiled rottenness." We have a house to reassemble out of more boxes than I knew existed and a system to set up to care for it. I have a writing career to get off the ground which means setting up the interrelationships of the crew and passengers of the space liner, S.S. Zephyr, at the moment. Without believable relationships, it won't matter how neat life on a luxury liner in space is. Science fiction is driven by real life human drama.

It is going to hurt but I have exactly zero chance of living the dream by doing nothing. I remain terrified by the mere possibility that I have the wrong price for the house repair. The right number means that I could get a bank check for the full amount as early as Monday. If it's the higher number, I will need a few months. It is potentially an honest mistake at worst. I'm willing to presume an honest mistake where the missing TV is concerned but I would be ecstatic to receive the same consideration in return. It seems to be the best possible outcome.

In the midst of all this pain and stress of reentering my life, Melissa reminded me yet again why she's my best girl, my dream girl and the wifey I'd choose every time all over. She had told me that she was going to re-bandage my feet where heel blisters had broken open and gotten ugly. I had bled through my sock and she told me that she was going to treat my feet as soon as I showered. A considerate person would have stopped what he was doing that very moment, showered and thanked her a million times while she bandaged. I'm just not very considerate.

The truth is that I had a headache that made standing intolerable. By the time medication made it possible, I showered but my poor wifey was tuckered out asleep in bed. I showered and joined her sleeping on my stomach so that I was less likely to bleed on the sheets. I woke to the very slight disturbance of Melissa disinfecting and bandaging my wounded feet. More than that, she knew I hadn't slept well at the hotel so she was trying to do this without waking me. I'm not a total schmuck. She caught me cooperating by holding my feet up on cue or else I would have let her not wake me. She still all but succeeded because I was only awake for a few seconds at a time and went back to sleep immediately after she finished.

Isn't that about the sweetest thing you've ever heard? Go ahead and be jealous because you can't have her.

Almost Done

A crew of contractors has finished fixing the damage to my house at long last. The work didn't take all that long. It was more a case of getting money together and trying to clean the house and looking for a time when they were available while we could leave here and remain in range to handle anything that came up. Normally, I refer to this task as putting out small fires but I didn't wish to tempt fate this time. All that remains is the task of getting the right amount of money in the right person's hands. You never know. I might end up with some cash headed my way after I pay out the full amount paid to me according to the estimate.

The next task will be a labor of love that could take a very long time. We have all these boxes to unload some of which will end up thrown away or donated because we will decide that there is no more room for it all. The effort involved in all of this will be so daunting that it is painful to think about literally. This is what moving in should have been like if we had taken the time to do it right. With no one making sarcastic comments about us taking on electives when we haven't finished requirements, it is something within reach. It could simply take a very long time. I'm thinking about something beyond a project or even a campaign. This might be the evolution of our home.

I've been thinking a lot about practical improvements. For one thing, we're using two second hand microwaves given to us when we were moving back in 2000-1. Since I used heat so much of the time for pain, it was imperative that the bag of special corn kernels fit into the oven. It only fit into the big microwave which had one serious flaw as well. It did not rotate so food cooked in it came out with an unreasonably amount of uneven heat. One food particle so hot that it would burn your mouth would be next to an ice crystal. My primary use of the kitchen these days is to brew herbal teas that relax away some pain but the tea kettle takes too long. It also hurts when it whistles. The hotel and my mother-in-law have microwaves with a beverage setting. I can brew a cup of herbal tea in a couple of minutes that is just as effective as the stuff that takes forever to cook. We could replace two microwaves with one, save space and come out ahead on pain control.

Also, I need to think ahead about falling on stairs. My recent lucky streak involving stairs seems to coincide with time spent in a first floor hotel room with no stairs. I may not need a stair lift for a decade but it's better to start preparing now. Beyond that, we may need to turn the first floor bathroom into a wheelchair accessible full bath. The need for that should be even further off but this is something that could be part of the house's evolution.

As strange as it sounds, this is me being optimistic. I'm writing about the future which implies belief that I will have a future. Part of me wonders how on Earth I can keep living with so much pain and how I will keep dragging myself forward when I can barely drag myself out of bed. Well, I'm calling this an evolutionary process when it would take most people my age a couple of weeks. I'm taking my disadvantages into account and turning them into advantages.So long as there is no expected due date, I can putter along like a poorly made golf cart.

Unfortunately, I have something new to worry about. There are two sets of numbers on my claim estimate. One looks just like what I agreed to and the other looks considerably more than that. No one has billed me for either amount yet but it's just something to make me twitch and give me nightmares.Thankfully, Melissa was with me when I discovered this. She reminded me of all my tricks that I've used over the years to make it through worst case scenarios. We're also concerned that there is no reference to the ruined furniture that the adjuster agreed was covered. I'm trying to hang on to the idea that I can trust what I was told. That would be a $500 deductible with most things covered.

Oh, well. I asked for clarification and it will come eventually.

Holiday Blues

I've had more trouble writing this particular entry than any I can recall writing before. I've spent most of the previous week muddling around in what you might call a state. At first, I thought it was purely physical. The Chiari symptoms seem to be part punishment and part balancing mechanism. At first, I was on a high like I've only experienced a few times since I got sick. I was paying attention to the other side of writing at last by getting my work "out there" as I've been telling Melissa. At the same time, it wasn't truly out there as in available for potentially hostile individuals. I'd sent the link to download a few selected pieces to a few friends who knew me to varying degrees.

My high got even higher when I had information drop into my lap on Facebook. An old friend is happy, healthy and as fully engaged in life as ever. I'll give myself a little more credit than that. When I decided that I wanted to run down a list of names, there was my friend sitting right there in the open but with a new name. She managed to find her someone and get married just as I had. Maybe I was giddy from my time spent awake but I set aside my usual reticence and desire to have a decision surrounded on all sides before taking it. I sent a Facebook message which I do not think has been received but there is no way to know for sure. Some part of me that is still nursing wounds from old high school and college battles fears the rejection I'd see in no reply. I've always been one to avoid provoking others to anger or frustration, I have suppressed my urge to follow up. It might not be considered harassment or anything like that but I don't have to cross legal lines to disappoint myself. I suppose I'll wait a while longer then attempt another re-introduction.

Within hours of sending this message, I was crushed by fatigue and vulnerability. I'd been awake for 72 hours or longer in pain. Certainty went away along with the arguably manic energy I used to try marketing my work. There is a lot of uncertainty when you set out to write fiction for a living but this was different. I mentioned the many layers of uncertainty with my old friend. They range from the technical to practical matters like being priority 11 on a day with 10 slots in it which is something that causes me to not return messages and emails but then there are the old wounds which cause me less rational doubts. My temporary physical deterioration combined with  the old wounds and the doubts inherent in writing for others to see until it became something different.

Thanksgiving wasn't really a day of giving thanks for me as a child. It was a day for earning my oxygen in front of a wider audience than usual. I have to be doing pretty badly to fall back on trying to earn my oxygen already but this was worse. I tried to measure my worth in the world with a few well placed sallies from inside my little fortress. The result was pain, exhaustion and silence. In my dazed state, I took quiet to mean an ominous silence. For some reason, I made excuses to discount the people who did express caring and I'm sorry for that. When I'm trying to justify my use of public oxygen, it is because I believe that I am in deficit. I feel the need to move mountains and too weak to raise my head for long.

I need to shift my thinking. People are distracted by the holidays while I look for distractions from the holidays. All that blaring joy hurts.

Overdoing It

I should get a theme song one of these days so I can just play it instead of explaining how my mind got ahead of my body once again. I have an author's page on Facebook now where you can get three of my favorite recent works of fiction if I know you and trust you to not distribute it. It was easy to set up and I actually copy and pasted the catalog to the new page. Of course, I've been trying to clean some in advance of the house repair that should be happening soon. That involved backing up a phone call to the insurance adjustor in case I was mistaken and the contractor was not supposed to inform him. It also helps to offer friendly reminders when you need a favor from someone somewhere. I'm not sure whether this would count as a favor or an ADA requirement but I'm not going to be able to live here while people are banging hammers, etc.

In any case, I've been frustrated by how long it has been taking me to write the new novel. I have no idea when I'll be ready to declare the first draft of "Professor Pruitt" finished if I don't decide that the whole idea was terrible anyway. The gears in my head threatened to strip on me. I have people who have "liked" my author page mostly because they are my friends. A couple of people have drafts out from the Adobe Acrobat server but they do not want me sitting behind them looking over their shoulders and flinching every time I think they might be frowning. At least two of these victims...err....volunteers are fellow chronic pain patients and have perfectly awful yet understandable reasons of their own to flinch.

Maybe something in my unfinished folders would generate a new idea for me but they ended up being discouraging. I stopped writing those drafts for good reasons. What about the old standby novels? No. Melissa came as close as she will come to asking me to drop that project and seemed very relieved when I spoke of it in the past tense. Those novels can be seen as my first investment of serious time and energy in writing.

The adrenaline rush wore off and the arthritis kicked in. Before I could reach a full scale panic attack, I remembered that I was overdue for my nice calming medicine. I was hit with a brief case of title envy when I saw a link to something on Facebook called "The Klonopin Diaries" or something very close to that. Unfortunately, it could very well have been a non-fiction account of someone living with a panic disorder. I take my Klonopin for sleep since my mind refuses to shut down at bedtime yet it never has done much of anything that I've noticed. Melissa says she can tell the difference and I made her my coach in such matters for one of the million or so reasons why I married her. I trust her to look out for me.

My beloved is a very good coach. I was sitting here fretting because I don't have a reasonably professional looking picture of me taken in the last decade to use on my author's page. I know. It's a bit too ballsy of me to call it an author's page based on a lot of unpublished work so I listed this as my official site. I also threw an age restriction on there because I don't want Facebook to sue me for dropping the f-bomb every so delicately the way I do. Obviously, I've been posting links to these posts on my main FB page and my Twitter feed so making the author page 18+ won't affect anyone who wants me relax and not give a shit about my fucking language.

It's almost 4:30 AM and I'm having serious thoughts about my fourth cup of coffee in the last 24 hours. I could drink some herbal tea instead and I really should get away from my keyboard. If I start a major writing project at 4:30 AM while my arthritis is bad, I'm asking to a 10+ Chiari headache. This career thing will take time. Managing agonizing pain is my full-time job as much as I'd prefer writing. I need to go use my nice PS3 in my comfy chair where I will fall asleep if the need strikes. Up here at my desk, I will start pacing when the need hits. I haven't fallen down the stairs in a while. Yes, go sit in the comfy chair and be a good cat daddy.

I think I'm experiencing a case of what fellow Chiari blogger, Brian Murphy, wrote about recently. He is upset that so many Chiarians he knows aren't making it. The fact that you know you will experience agonizing pain for a significant part of the day is a bit of a downer. I deal with this in a number of ways. First of all, I have my beloved's support. Melissa is a treat to be around on a daily basis. She understands that pain control is a full time job except that it doesn't stop at 40 hours/week and the pay... Okay. The the disability pay is something to be thankful for though it is not a gift. I paid into the SSDI system with everyone else and then I bought extra private disability insurance because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Treating it as a gift is one of those traps that can lead to the ultimate disability trap. "Have I earned my oxygen today?"

In my case, I go on absurdly difficult mental quests. Get my fiction published not just once but on an ongoing basis. Find people who mattered in the past so that I can tell them how much mattered. There has been someone on top of that list for a long time. I ran into her accidentally in the Summer of 1993 and then she disappeared. I went into total brain lock back then before it was one of my symptoms and so I never told her and I've been trying to make up for it ever since. Of course, saying that I spent the last 20 years doing anything would be an exaggeration. Since 1999, my life has been about Melissa and pain management more than anything else. Every once in a while, I found myself looking for a short list of people for an hour or two. I found one of them about a decade ago but she asked me to not tell anyone where she was so I found it easier to pretend that she was still missing.

I found another one this morning. I hadn't seen her or heard anything from her since the Summer of 1993. How could someone avoid running into me even accidentally over all that time? Well, it probably starts with moving somewhere outside the Small World boundaries and ended with getting your own life. She might or might not contact me but I told someone that I would be happy enough just to know that she is alive, healthy and happy somewhere. Another impossible quest has succeeded so it would probably be smart to take a day or two off.

After all, the last thing I want to do is embark on another quest without getting a decent day of sleep first. Must remember that a watched inbox never fills.

Logic Puzzle

You have to take your entertainment where you can get it. I happen to take a certain perverse pleasure in the logical puzzles my symptoms provide. Do you remember logic puzzles as a kid? You would get a subject and a list of clues. The subject might be something like "Summer Activities" and the clues would run along the lines sentences like "Martha hates swimming." You would make up a matrix with the activities or names across the top and the other down the side. Eventually, you would learn that Billy likes boating and X out the other names for boating and the other activities for Billy. You would be able to narrow down Martha's preferences to the other three choices and go from there.

My logic puzzles would have to be three dimensional because you would need to be able to list activities, symptoms that prevent those activities and things to moderate or aggravate symptoms. Right now, we're moving into cold weather so my arthritis is acting up. It's been a bad year for arthritis in general but there is always room for decline. It is difficult to do anything with my arms or hands during a flareup but I can count on passive activities more because the boredom counts less during immediate pain. Drinking chamomile tea helps calm me and warms my hands which I can't bundle effectively and so I drink more of it in arthritis peak season. Then again, I refuse to give up writing altogether for any given season so I accept a pain increase which makes me want more tea which makes me sleepy.

Stress headaches are the worst for logical puzzles. The best way to make inroads against pain is to stop what you're doing that aggravated the symptom in the first place. Try doing that with stress headaches. I can stress about not being able to stop stressing over the original problem so that's pretty much out. There are two main tricks for dealing with stress headaches. One is learning to take breaks. The utility company that is threatening to cut me off is closed until Monday so I don't have to think about it on Saturday or Sunday. The other is attacking the problem once properly medicated and all. Utilities are a useful example since I'm not in trouble with them right now. (That's twice my knee twitched and hit my bottom desk drawer when I've asserted a lack of specific trouble. Honestly, bill paying time starts this Wednesday!)

Utilities are a great example because they don't make money by shutting you down. Paying them in full is the best solution but most are willing to take the maximum interest penalty allowable by law plus small fines to not shut you down. It tends not to add up to that much in what you pay them but I don't want anyone thinking that a corporation is doing something out of the kindness of its heart. Corporations have boards of directors expressly required to eliminate any heart and soul from consideration in favor of keeping stock prices high. Businesses can be owned by individuals who often have good hearts. You can stay warm by taking a deal from the power company, reduce your stress level and they make money on the deal.

Relationship stress is actually tougher than monetary stress most of the time. Of course, monetary stress is the most commonly cited cause of relationship stress. Don't ask it to make sense. It will simply snarl at you as the cycle spins faster. I am defining relationship stress as broadly as possible here and recognizing subsets which I will ignore for the moment. We all know about marital stress, parent/child stress and various kinds of friendship stress. If you live with and love someone who is driving you out of your freaking mind, there is no easy answer. Therefore, said loved one might make you explain something obvious to you for the fifteenth time that day. Given that you do not wish to hurt them, your options for dealing with the loved one are limited.

Try making a logical puzzle out of two adults living together. Drink some chamomile tea and reduce the headache but be prepared to hear about it should you not wash the mug fast enough. If you take too long, you might end up worse off than when you began. Relationship deafness is a good tactic although you run the risk of ignoring a serious concern. The good news there is that you spend much of your life learning what's safe to ignore and what isn't.

Unlike those logic puzzles of old, symptom and pain puzzles usually involve a little of this and a little of that. My doctors and I used to talk of it all like a big old fashioned machine with a lot of knobs. If you turn one knob all the way up, you might feel pretty good for a while but that knob is likely to malfunction shortly. You need to learn how to turn each knob just enough to get the benefit you need with minimal risk. When it works, it can be great fun and a big boost to your morale. When it doesn't work, it can be interesting to figure out why. When a knob breaks and has to be replaced, it can be most interesting of all if painful. What can I replace this with that is similar enough to have the same effect but without being so close that it breaks right away.

If nothing else, finding new medical answers can lead to Han Solo quotes.
"This one goes here. That one goes there."
"Turn it off! Turn it off!" Said with small explosions in the background.

I know. I prefer to call it eccentricity.

First Day Back

In the way most people mean, I've been back from New York for a while now. I think it might even be a week or something close but the travel costs me a lot in pain. This might be my first day back from total convalescence. I started a downturn sometime back in September or October when the weather changed and I started getting excited about October. It might have been the weather or my body might not know the difference between eustress and distress. (I am so grateful to Mr. Mark Davis for an excellent lesson on the subject in Gym/Health class ever so long ago!) That's good stress and bad stress respectfully in the simplified terms I was ready to learn in grade school. It's the difference between anticipation and fear or the night before Christmas or the night before some big exam.

The distress followed in short order. Barbara Allen, my sister-in-law, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in early October. Whether deserved or not, she has a little reputation for taking care of things in her own time. She knows what I mean. I'm all too happy to report that this was an exception and that she's cancer free in what seems like record time. I guess it's good to have a sprinter in the family. (Obviously, the time went slower for her and her recovery isn't quite over so don't go jumping all over her.) I'm more of a marathon man if I may extend the metaphor a little. Sometimes, I forget this in the heat of battle. (Just can't resist a mixed metaphor!) I want to win and be done now if not yesterday. I could barely resist taking it out on every loved one in sight but I'm not going to bash myself over it.

The fact is that my pain meds stopped working for the most part in October and then I had some guaranteed bad times that felt like someone was kicking me while I was down. I can handle that part quite well on my own. Thank you very much. There was some hope during my last full day in New York when I was able to get past the pain enough to enjoy MSNBC. They held out and kept their internet/cable long enough for me to have some entertainment while I was there and it was much appreciated. Nonetheless, the trip back home crushed this nascent recovery as expected.

Having read my last few posts, I decided to hold out until I could write something positive. While I maintain my position on the grouchy side of the Force, I don't want to chase everyone away with pure grumpiness. There are plenty of cute little kids out there being excessively brave to show us all that all we need to do is hope. That's not exactly how it works for them but it's harder to raise money for the various Children's Hospitals with ads about how Johnny doesn't want to take his medicine today because it tastes terrible or hurts going in and he feels sicker after taking it anyway. Maybe I'll find a way to make the concept work and write "Short Term Thinking Johnny" as an ad for them.

Now that I'm back to my normal levels of pain that I can handle even if they piss me off at times, it feels like a break from the pain. Honestly, the greatest danger is that I'll treat it like one, overdo something and then go backsliding.  It isn't easy because all I want to do is write, write, write! It started with a recent burst of activity on the tablet because there's not much else I can do while virtually chair bound. I wrote my friend who never writes back because I knew she could sop up the activity. Oops! This was when she decided to write back and I found myself writing as fast as I could manage with stylus and tablet. Barbara would have let me use her PC or her laptop but neither would have worked well in the sofa bed or comfy chair I staked out for myself. Melissa did a great job picking out that tablet for me! My poor friend had to cry uncle but she was a big help just by responding on those days.

Let me offer a few quick reminders about my change of season tactics concerning chronic pain. For those of us with arthritis, we may have to choose between excess sweat and pain until the cold weather sets in for good. For me, I learned to take the sweat over my bitter objections. I used to think sweating was one of the worst things in the world and I still dislike it. On the other hand, my arthritis medicine doesn't work right without swaddling as a supplement. Oh! It might have helped to have confirmed that my doctor allowed a temporary increase in that medicine to help get me through what I call - with apologies to slightly aging women - the change. For those of you without my incredible doctors, please try to stay warm and bundled where you are sorest. You might find that a little temperature discomfort can go a long way for pain control and there's no chance of tolerance, addiction and I guess overdose of warmth/fire is the same risk for everyone.

Here I am up and out of my comfy chair and sitting in my writing chair and it's good for the soul.

Sicker and Tireder

I'm wiped out. The only reason why I'm not predicting disaster and collapse is that I seem to do pretty well bluffing my way along with lousy cards. My pain doc appointment was frustrating and soothing at the same time. I got talked into letting them take my blood pressure which was the highest it has ever been but I think that is largely due to the fact that my arm is still throbbing. I feel like the very picture of my favorite grandmother who helped raise me early on. (Both of my parents were working so someone needed to take me!) She always seemed to be feeble, rarely left her chair and complained of arthritis all the time. I miss her dearly to this day and I don't expect that to change.

In a time when all my symptoms are spiking and I'm losing ground on my temper, there is one sign of hope. I don't spend as much time in my chair as I did a few years ago. In fact, I've written 2-3 marketable looking pieces in the last year. All told, that's probably around a thousand pages of work including multiple drafts. No, that wouldn't mean anything professionally but remember that my full time job is pain management. I do not remember a time when this favorite grandmother was active mentally or physically. I'm working on one of my serious projects nearly every day and I come off pretty well comparing myself to someone double my age who succumbed to presumed Alzheimer's.

There never has been a good apples to apples comparison for me. My parents used to compare me to the smartest kids in the school and I came out unfavorably. The other kids had other things going for them like healthy bodies and social lives so it was unfair for me to compare myself to them. My concentration was supposed to be on academics and nothing else. Even now, I wonder if I could drop down the pain scale if I simply did very little but listen to music.

Every month, I go to the pain doc and make the same report. I would probably be doing well but... This time, I admitted to an apparently endless series of buts. I'm just putting myself back together from being apart from Melissa for four days and I'll be leaving with her on another four day trip tomorrow. I plan on throwing everything I have into pain control yet I'm asking for it. November could easily be the worst month in memory. I do this willingly so that no one will shine a penlight into my eyes to make sure I'm alive. Someone at the pain doc's office asked why I haven't shaved or cut my hair. I explained but this nurse seems to think I've forgotten or something.

Hello! I'm still alive here. I'll cut my hair and shave when I am healthy enough to require a business appropriate appearance. Until then, I am gearing up for my 40th birthday purple Mohawk. After that, you never know. My birthday is awfully close to Halloween and all. Chances are that I won't be shaving off this much hair when it took me a few years to grow it all in the first place. Right now, it's a hedge against baldness. While I doubt it truly works this way, it seems as if it would be tougher to lose this much hair all at once. I think of it as a pet that's very difficult to kill accidentally. I wash it when I'm up to standing in the shower that long and blow it dry if Melissa is awake. It feels good moving around on my head somehow.

As a child and young adult, I wasted a lot of energy resisting grooming rituals. We're like birds getting our plumage just right for some mating ritual and I didn't want to be a bird. I felt like I was both too good for the stupid dance meant to show off on that animal level and that I was so bad that I could only fail if I tried. My mother sent me to the barber who was too good of a guy to get stuck in the middle of that pointless contest. He was such a good guy that I let down my guard around him. My mother stopped going there with me but sent me with the money. This is one case where I truly forgot what was going on and the barber decided that my family was good for it. I think I was suspected of sabotage but it was just forgetfulness.

The pain is going to force me to get to the point if nothing else. I went for my appointment determined to make no excuses. Things were not going to get better and I wanted something from them to recognize the months of pain. The first thing I got was flat out refusal. I was surprised and started to react badly when I remembered that I had rejected the change I was asking her to consider flat out because I read the monograph on it and determined that I was not a candidate and the main pain doc had agreed with me. We had rejected the other possible way to get me better medication because it involved minor surgery. We're talking outpatient stuff but I get nervous when surgery is mentioned. However, it sounded like my doctor was taking it off the table.

That's when I realized that we were not speaking the same language at that moment. I wanted pain relief not more narcotic medication. Therefore, we discussed changes that we could make around the periphery. We may or may not have intended to increase my arthritis medication. I'm not sure because the pharmacist says it exceeds the standard dosages but that he has an override to use. My doctor will let me know on Monday if I remember to call her. We increased by fibro medication to help deal with the muscle burn. That should help a lot and we kept me on the muscle relaxer which I take very sparingly.

I never identify the doctor or practice beyond "pain doc" for a number of reasons. One is that I have pragmatic doctors who are willing to let me try thinking outside the box. I have tacit permission to drink alcohol for pain management purposes despite the fact that most doctors would call this "self-medicating" and condemn patients for doing it. Maybe that's just mental health professionals who know that alcohol does not make you feel better about yourself. It's a mood booster in my experience. If you're sad, you'll get sadder. I've also seen it work but I guess I was more agitated than sad. I was scared about drinking too much though not by healthy person standards. We're not talking about drinking myself sick or even stupid. We're just talking about potential invisible effects on my liver.

That's when I heard the same three words from two different people. They are incredibly reassuring for how short they are. Melissa and my doctor both said, "I trust you." As long as good people are looking out for me, I can trust myself. Therefore, I will drink what I need to drink to dull the pain within my own paranoid limits until Melissa says when. Then I'll stop because I can't drive or walk to a liquor store.

Melissa says that things will get better. We'll get the house fixed even if it isn't done by our current contractor. We'll get to the plumbing which turns every shower into a wannabe bath. There will be a break in the stress somewhere. I'd like it to be soon at my favorite hotel.

My Old Favorite Band

I had been listening to nothing but Pearl Jam and WMMR for a long time now but I had a favorite band before Pearl Jam formed. I'm connected to Facebook and had been checking my "likes" to see how many things snuck their way in. That's when I remembered that I had the Spotify app on my page and, ridiculous name aside, it's free music including a band's entire history. One of these days, I had planned to listen to some of Phil's earliest work as lead singer of Genesis. It's awfully good. I had assumed that "Squonk" was some of that Peter Gabriel crap but it's on "Trick of the Tail" with Phil singing lead. "Entangled" is on this first album as well as "Ripples" which Melissa and I fell in love with seeing them in concert.

That was an amazing show. We had seats in the second level, front row centered on the stage. I got dazzled a lot but this was the show where I devised a lot of concert survival tactics. We had already seen Pearl Jam once but outdoors where we couldn't see a thing. This show was a revelation because I hadn't even bothered to purchase the previous album or two from Phil solo. He had let me down with one album utterly devoid of the life that always filled his voice. I was pleased to see him back with Genesis for one last tour but his voice sounded pretty bad on TV and I decided to sink back into memories of better days. Then I saw them performing "I Can't Dance" live somewhere and all the old life was back. They were coming to the Wells Fargo Center and I wasn't going to die without ever seeing my first favorite band play live.

I know. How can I go from Genesis to Pearl Jam? At the time, Pearl Jam was a force of nature with driving guitars and lyrics about bad things happening to good people. They were exactly what I needed because I needed to learn how to get angry without taking it out on myself. Along the way, I discovered that Eddie Vedder and Phil Collins had something surprising in common. They will be singing along in fairly different registers and then both of them soar to something transcendent. Listen to "Ripples" from Genesis and then "Given to Fly" from Pearl Jam if you're not sure what I mean. I'm pretty sure you can manage both from my Facebook page. Just beware of Eddie's ability to be most eloquent when dropping the f-bomb.

Then I saw Genesis live and realized just how alike the two bands really were. Phil sang lyrics that never would have made it past the record companies of the day. He took songs that fluttered and floated on the radio and made them rage right before my eyes. Mike Rutherford might not play as fast as Mike McCready but he is very good at what he does. Phil used drum machines as some of my friends would tell me with sneers in their voices but he used them with his drumming. He liked to say that the machines could handle the boring parts while he did the rest. I had been afraid that Phil would take it easy and avoid too many highs and lows but he soared right there before my eyes. It was wonderful.

There are so many things that I have been fortunate enough to see and do. My life may seem like a non-stop whirlwind of hellish torment and I see it that way all too often. It helps to remember those times of pure joy in as much detail as possible. I remember exactly the way Phil sounded when he told the crowd that Genesis wouldn't be back. They were retiring at the end of this tour. I realized that I had done it and had come so close to failing. Sweet success was mine at last. I remember the thrill I felt when I realized that Eddie was singing one of my favorite songs, "Porch," while swinging from a light fixture. I remember thinking the second Pearl Jam show was over and they broke into "Yellow Ledbetter." I remember the thrill of realizing that Genesis was going straight from "Home by the Sea" to "Second Home by the Sea" the way I thought it should have gone on the album. It sounded as if Phil was singing to Melissa and me when he sang "It's Gonna Get Better." I needed to hear that more than I even knew.

By the standards of our earliest days when we couldn't afford food, things sure have gotten better. My house may look like a bomb went off in it and I'm only talking about the structural damage from flooding but it's mine. I have the comfy chair I needed since our reclining love seat came apart. I know that my house is getting fixed partially anyway and that I'm going to spend the time while the job is being done in a more comfortable place. I'm going to win the important fights in spite of the pain. More precisely, to spite the pain.

The ordeal of not seeing Melissa for days at a time starts this Wednesday instead of last Wednesday. My week long reprieve is nearly over. It seems that I've already started my first physical reaction to missing her. It seems that I've lost the ability to sleep again. Climbing the stairs with sleep meds in me plus total exhaustion was exciting. There just doesn't seem to be much point in doing anything. I'm too tired to concentrate on anything already and my meds will not function under these circumstances. I don't want to sleep today because there will be plenty of time for sleep on those days when she's not coming home.

Not coming home. I try to tell myself that it's not really all that different from most days. She goes to work early for day shifts like today and stays late. I told her recently that her night shifts are as bad as not seeing her from midnight to midnight. She goes to sleep around midnight the night before, doesn't get up until the absolute last minute before going to work and then doesn't get home from the night shift until midnight or later. Even then, I know she's coming home at some point in that 24 hour period. That's not the case this time. I don't want to eat or sleep and she hasn't even left yet. I lose today because of whatever she does after work, tomorrow because it's a night shift and then she leaves on Wednesday.

All I can do is freaking endure again.

When I posted this, I had a sudden feeling of remorse. I don't edit my blog/journal work. These are my thoughts as I felt them at the time. At the time, I was freaking out in what I thought was a big way. It turns out that I'm getting a lot better at enduring as I get older. I was feeling the emotionally bruising sense that I have no local family other than Melissa in a big way. I've cast my parents out of my life for what I intend to be the final time. They were very big about adults sleeping in the beds they made as I grew up. This was always right before they fixed the immediate problem and left me with a bigger but longer term one. As I liked to put it, I was Wile E. Coyote and they were the big boulder that landed on me after I fell off the cliff.

The cliffs have been getting higher as I have gotten older but I made one decision while shockingly young. So long as it was only my life that was affected, I would die before seeking their help. At first, it was an easy decision because they simply imposed their "help" on me and I took it with bad grace. It's a Thomas Covenant sort of compromise from the early books before he learned better. As I got older, my life has gotten more interconnected which is both the problem and its solution. The problem is easier to discuss before the solution. My life always involves others now so the dying to preserve my principles option is out. It's not a last resort somewhere in my bag of tricks but it is completely out. I will die someday and plan on kicking and screaming the entire way there. That's the only way I go.

The solution is that there are others connected with me. Problems are unique to the people facing them. Truth is that I've found most problems will unravel if I ask for a small favor from someone. Once you add in the possibility of several someones who may or may not even know of each other, there is a solution for most problems that will hardly inconvenience anyone. I can't tell you what it is only because it is unique to each problem. It's subtle, it takes very little effort and it's how all of my best work has been done. The hard part is building up a network over the course of a lifetime. They are slippery and like to fall apart if you don't manage them. The best ones are the ones you can manage by doing things you'd do anyway. Social media helps the way Christmas cards did for previous generations. Just a little touch to let you know I haven't forgotten you. It sounds cynical but it isn't because it's always something I was going to do anyway.

I will miss Melissa while she is away but she won't really even be gone. There are these odd inventions called cell phones that I resist because they are annoying but this is a useful time to have one. Melissa will not be out of touch and she has her own networks that might even surpass mine. I will probably catch up on some writing I've been meaning to do unless the pain is too much. I love saying that because writing projects breed like cuddly rats. Every time I'm working on one, I think of half a dozen others. I will never catch up unless I run out of inspiration. I'll probably spend a lot more time online with the tablet like I did when I was in pain in the hotel. There are a few people to whom I'd like to reach out (see above about networks) but I haven't made the time yet.

I will endure but I'm not one of those pansy statues or buildings that waste away after a few thousand years. I will endure smiling or snarling but never passive.

Now I can risk putting this out there for others to see.

A New Definition of Pain and Suffering

The Pearl Jam show was amazing even if the crowd around me was less than stellar. I was not interested in getting a contact high from my neighbor's very skunky smelling pot nor did I appreciate the elbows to the head from him dancing while too wasted to stand. Oddly enough, the closest I came to losing my temper was when his girlfriend went to put her arm around him and gouged my face with her nails. She didn't leave a mark much less draw blood but I let them know how much I enjoyed coughing up a storm only to get whacked in the head numerous times.

The fact was that I was at the end of my rope when I got ready to go to the concert. Everything hurt already with this breaking last year's record for the harshest change of season pain ever. I thought I had planned well for this concert but a slight mistake buying tickets forced Melissa and me to start over and we lost the good seats that we were buying. Just too many numbers to type in such a short time. I didn't know the Wells Fargo Center as well as I thought so I figured any second level seat would do. Unfortunately, there is no third level. We arrived an hour early for the printed starting time only to learn that there was no opening band. The rest of the crowd strolled in just before the real starting time so I had spent two extra hours in a seat designed to squeeze every last cent out of a potential crowd. My knees cramped and I was wedged between the two chair arms. There was no leaping for joy from this PJ fan.

The show started on a quiet note which I found soothing for about 1.5 seconds. The crowd all jumped up and started dancing anyway. The first few songs were thought provoking and full of subtle guitar work but I couldn't hear a thing. The crowd was so loud that I couldn't quite hear the band. Pearl Jam's sound engineers fixed that problem before long but not until after I had loosened my ear plugs. Soon, I found a position where I could lean back against the top of my seat and see through a gap between a guy recording the concert illegally and someone who was pleasantly short. If I stood up any more, the sides of the chair were going to remove my pants and that's just something I prefer to keep private.

After the first few songs, it was a matter of agony and ecstasy. The agony came from all over my body including my legs where my thighs were going painfully numb while my swollen knees simply ached. The ecstasy came from the music and what I could see onstage. They played just about everything I had hoped to hear except "Love Boat Captain" for me and "Black" for Melissa and me. Mike played entire songs with his guitar held over his head. He must have been supporting all the weight with his left hand on the neck while still using it to play. He also played for long stretches with the guitar behind his head. It was incredibly cool to be on Mike's side of the stage even with my head brushing the Wells Fargo Center's roof. Eddie had been remarkably well behaved during the first two concerts we attended. This time, he climbed a stage light hanging from the roof and went swinging Tarzan style overhead (yet well below me) through "Porch." He had his feet resting on the flat top of the light but he did it with a microphone in hand so it was classic Eddie Vedder. We sang along to all the songs we knew at the top of our lungs (between coughing sprees for me - damn inconsiderate potheads!) in that rare tribal experience left in American life including "Not for You" which I realized is the ultimate expression of that tribal feeling. Outsiders who don't get us can just [stay away] which I'm editing because I'm not eloquent with the f-bomb the way Eddie is.

Somehow, my loosened right ear plug got knocked out of my ear. It might have been during one of those shots from the dancing plume of smoke next to me. You think? I didn't notice it for quite some time until I realized that my entire body was taking the sound from the speakers like body punches. All of my spares were in my bag which was wedged between my feet. My sensible precautions were coming unglued one at a time. I even had my sunglasses on top of my head because the stage was pretty dark from our angle until a yellow spotlight nailed me during "Yellow Moon." Not sure if that quite makes it to ironic but it nearly cost me my balance and I was properly dazzled for a few minutes.

Agony was winning out over ecstasy bit by bit. Sometimes, chronic pain is too unpredictable to prepare for regardless of your experience. As the concert ended, I realized that I was more than ready to leave. There was no jubilant seeking of Pierre and Matt from WMMR. I wanted a bathroom and to go home in that order. The bathroom was just outside our section but I was unsteady on my feet anyway. The pain had gone past my endurance probably before we left. I doubt anything but Pearl Jam could have dragged me out of my sick bed (recliner) that night.

I must have looked terrible because some big guy walked me to the front of the bathroom line daring everyone to say something. I mean that pretty much literally. He had an even clearer picture of how badly I was doing than I did. On the way toward the elevator or stairs, I fell twice on flat ground. I know how to take a fall but the concrete hurt anyway. My second fall took place right in front of a Comcast employee who seemed to be questioning my right to take the elevator. Jackass! The contrast between the drunk guy helping me and the employee failing to do his job by helping me is absurd. It just wasn't funny at the time.

The pain only got worse the next day. My main defense against this sorta pain is reclining into a comfortable position and meditating my way to sleep. I was too overwhelmed and touch sensitive to find any sort of comfortable position. Beer brought a certain numbness with it but it deprives me of sleep. The concert was Monday night and today is Friday (might be Saturday before I post) with the time in between a painful blur. My cats took outrageous advantage of the fact that I could hardly get out of my chair. I was the perfect napping platform and 30 pounds of cat or more did not help me get up to meet my needs. For a while, it seemed like some sort of congealed hell but time did pass.

I seem to have regained a few useful hours where I can meditate past the pain. At first, I blamed myself as being stupid for going to see my favorite band. The thing is that we bought the tickets in July when I was anticipating a lot of relief from the stress triggered pain of the time. Looking forward to this show brought me a lot of the relief I did feel. Call it stubbornness but Melissa and I are working on a revised set of rules for enjoying a concert despite extreme chronic pain. It might help to take a limo up with some fan friends of ours and we will need better seats. Getting the right mix of conditions for a little preliminary numbness could be crucial. Belgian beer in the limo plus using my right to take my medication when it's needed most seems logical. If there's a will,...sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and admit your preparations failed.

I hope it doesn't come to that again because a fourth Pearl Jam show will not be enough. I could follow them around the way people used to follow the Grateful Dead.

Old Wounds

I've always seen life in terms of battle except that my armies have faced far more inanimate obstacles than actual enemies. Those few who see things similarly understand that this is not paranoia. I was taught to trust no one except those picked out by my parents and then I found that the world is a friendlier place than I dared hope. Unfortunately, this world has plenty of opportunity for conflict. Whether we seek out battle or scout out a path of least resistance, we all get hurt. It's inevitable. Most wounds are minor and we get over them so completely that we are able to shovel a layer of dirt over them. We do this because even minor wounds are painful and we wish to forget the equally painful circumstances behind them.

I have taken a longer road healing my wounds and taking the time to learn from them. Some questioned why I would do this when it was such a harder road. Recently, I've come to believe that I had to take the longer and harder road because I'd used up my quota of dirt and shovels. I had no ability to disbelieve my wounds left. I had faced a betrayal worse than anything I could truly explain. In modern war, agents and double agents steal information and spread disinformation respectively. The traitors in my ranks didn't have to sneak in because one gave birth to me and the other was my first role model. They taught me that I was weak and that I was many terrible things. They taught me that my birth defect was shameful and that my failure to control it was inconsiderate and worse.

Life went on and I formed crucial friendships and alliances. I gained a lot of new wounds. Those new wounds always seemed to drag me down more than they did others. Hell! I ran into someone on Facebook and realized that I hadn't thought of her in a decade or two yet the thought of how she treated me brought out a moment or two of petty rage. I remembered that we were kids and that she didn't know what she was doing. I didn't even know how she had hurt me for a few more years. This is the new me and not the version she knew so I congratulated her on her hard work/good fortune, didn't even bother with a friend request and left off telling her that I always knew she was pretty. If I can forgive and then eventually feel some sort of renewed effort with the guy who defined the words "worst enemy" for decades, I can forgive a slight broken heart from 1988.

That was my point. Other people might not have cared at all. I can remember a damning amount of detail from what even I admit was a minor time in a part of my life I keep locked away. Why was I so desperate at such a young age? In the interests of honesty, I'm talking about a girl who grew up to be a supermodel to some degree of "supermodelness" and that's what the congrats were for. Desperate is not a reflection on her but on me. I was that desperate because I did not have parental affection that I could depend upon. My deeper and well buried wounds betrayed me in little ways and they betray me now.

Melissa is off today but needs to go out to say goodbye to a coworker. She asked me if I wanted anything while she was out and I told her that she could guess. I want alcohol. Good beer would be nice but I seem to drink it too fast and that thought sent me into an ugly downward spiral. "I eat too much, I drink too much...too much!" Depending on how well I heard it, that's either a quote or a paraphrase from the Dave Matthews' Band. I am recovering from overexerting myself while already down so I want extra painkillers in a nice and tasty liquid form. It only makes sense yet I link it to the fact that eating is one of the few dependable pleasures my damaged body will allow and pull out my parents' opinion that I am a glutton. A sleepy Melissa had to pull me back from the brink of...well nothing except a lot of physical and psychological pain. Back when we first met, it would have been a lot worse.

The fact is that my old wounds are similar to my disability in a few ways. One is that they will never truly go away yet they have gotten "little b better" over the course of my marriage. I still recall the wondrous feeling of meeting a group of people in college who wanted me around. I'll use first names only but Bob, Evan, Kate and Maggie wanted me around. If I were gone for more than a day, Bob or Evan would find me and bring me back in. It took them the better part of two semesters to convince me that it was possible to want me around. I spent a solid month looking for the proverbial punchline. That group broke up due to no fault of mine yet I blamed myself for years afterward.

Honestly, the shortest member of the Big Three was the first young woman to make me feel safe in my friendship with her. I loved her like a sister and our age difference let me sort out that odd difference between her and other girls. She was simply too important to waste any misunderstood feelings on. It's painful to remember the awful contrast between her sisterly love and the scorn of my birth family. It was more comfortable to hang out with her and her boyfriend singing along to oldies music than it was to spend any time at home. I believed that I was unworthy of her presence because I had been taught all about my flaws in great detail. I felt unworthy yet unaccountably safe and secure with the combination forming an addictive drug.

I can look back now and realize that she was a good person but not quite the super-saint I believed her to be. The truth is that hanging out with me is not torture to be endured. Believing that she was some super-special person more tolerant than a bus of nuns allowed me to hang on to the damage still being inflicted at home. Her boyfriend was every bit as much the friend she was but he wasn't blonde and pretty like she was. I'm sure his boyfriend or husband - I'm unsure of their formal status but they've been together longer than Melissa and I so they deserve some respect! - would disagree. It's all a matter of perspective and my perspective was skewed by abuse.

So, here I am baring my soul for the world yet again. I don't do it to punish my parents. I can forgive them especially since they always seemed to be trying with everything they had to do the right thing. Perhaps inadvertently, they prepared me to be tough enough to handle year after year of making it through the agony minute by minute. Also, what little I know of their childhoods suggest to me that they were always fighting against their own current of abuse.

No, my intended audience is not anyone who would be hurt by what I have to say. I am writing to that kid asking what on earth he did to deserve the pain he's feeling. You don't deserve it, pal. Just take that inadequate bit of relief and do what you can to improve the world. I'm writing to all those people suffering from chronic pain. I read something about recent suicides from just outside my personal area of influence and I ask you all to endure another day with me. Our bodies are betraying us and there is a natural urge to want to abandon the sinking ship. I ask that you endure and hope for a miracle with me. It need not be the cure to whatever ails you. Sometimes, the hello from an old friend is miracle enough for one day.

Finally, I write this to those people who probably didn't mean to hurt me quite so much many years ago like the supermodel girl. You acted as you believed you should and I do not fault you for that anymore. You just might want to know why I treated simple bruises to my ego like broken bones. You should know that most of the damage was there already. You did not do worse than inflict paper cuts on me and you had the right to be weirded out by my overreactions. You could not have known just as I never knew what truly motivated you. We never exchanged shoes to walk the proverbial mile.

Now I've opened up some old infected wounds trusting to sunlight and fresh air for a little more healing. Please pardon the smell. The air will clear in a little while like it has every other time. If I've stirred up guilt in anyone, I absolve you in the name of "Boston '88" and the Senior Prom and the many private conversations that touched my heart. We're all human in every sense of the word.

The Last Dark (not a review)

Wow! I just finished The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson and I am content within myself for the moment. In a very real way, I waited the better part of three decades for this book. Now that I have finished it, I am contented. I may never have to read again. Okay. I hope it's obvious that I'm joking about never reading again but I could never had died happily had this book not been written. No, I'm not dying any faster than I was yesterday or weeks ago but I am content with my mortality.

I've been struggling with being sick all summer long since a weekend trip to New York ran into the great flood and then into one of the culminating battles of my life without time for rest or recovery. I've been blaming myself for things that lie purely beyond my control. My mother always accused me of only caring about the things that were beyond my control but she assigned entire realms of blame to me. I'm not to blame for this heritage any more than I am for the rest of it. I'm sick. Just coping with being sick is more than I can handle. As for the rest, there are resources that are not part of me out there to help. Some of those are people, some are things and a few are actually cats whether or not they will admit this in public.

Do I assign the blame elsewhere? Nah! I don't need to do that anymore. I gave up blaming others long before I could stop blaming myself. Of course, we all fall into bad habits from time to time. Pain is a great teacher of good and bad habits. I should say it's a great teacher of irrational habits. It's difficult for me explain things like setting aside blame when the nature of humanity all but insists that I demand retribution for my hurts. I could give you the example of Melissa about how something came up just from living together that seemed to justify blaming her for all my pain yet that something is all but always gone within an hour or two. A better example could be how I dislike sin but value my fellow sinners. To put it in terms anyone who knows me would believe more easily, I have a very strong dislike for the damage done to this country by the Republican Party yet I will not blame any particular voter for inflicting that damage since they are driven by as much irrationality as I am. Unfortunately,  cannot forget even when I may hold someone blameless and forgive them. No one should have to put up with an abusive relationship no matter what causes it to exist.

I am terrified by situations that seem to overwhelm every resource I have. One of those is my terrible dependence on Melissa. I shudder at its effect on her. I get upset whenever we are separated for more than 12 hours or so. It looks as if there will be a need for us to endure some separation in the near future although it will depend on the exact nature of the plans others have. If we cannot meet the cost in terms of money, physical pain and my ability to endure it, I must endure a separation. It's a lot to ask of me but it's less than I ask of others and I recognize that. No matter what the exact nature of the plans entails, I cannot be Melissa's number one priority on a date coming up soon. I do not wish to jinx it because I know how easily complicated medical plans can come undone. I cannot be myself and tear at her that way. Whether I am physically with her or not does not alter this fact. I may end up having to bleat my needs at her or someone else more loudly than usual but that doesn't mean she can prioritize me as highly on that day. I cannot think of anyone with as strong a claim on me than Melissa but she has her independence.

So, to put this in more certain terms, I'm going to forgive Melissa for likely being forced to abandon me to take Barbara to Yale's hospital up in New Haven, CT. I'm going to forgive myself in advance for the fact that I'm likely to give her a hard time about it once the pressure really hits me. Haven't decided whether that pressure will be financial, physically painful or emotionally painful yet. I don't know whether I'll be left behind in New York for less time or Delaware for less physical pain but it seems very likely to be one of the above. Four people in a four person car for a multiple hour drive would be unpleasant enough but then make one of them me in extra pain. Sounds easier on Melissa if I'm here.

Here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to use this as some sort of weapon intentionally. I'm going to give anyone other than Melissa a hard time and I'm going to try to avoid doing it to her. I can just feel the headache coming on as she attempts to get me to make all the decisions involving me so that I can't complain. Leave it to me to mention headaches. For some reason, we still only have one plugged in functioning phone in the house and I left it on the first floor. I dashed and whoever it was didn't bother leaving a message so I didn't get a chance to pick up on what would have been the fifth ring. Dashing up and down stairs is known to produce headaches in the small number of laboratory rats stupid enough to try it. I need to lie down.

I slept for hours on end. There's no telling when I fell asleep but I have an idea of when I woke up. Melissa came home the first time and announced the arrival of medical stuff I was waiting for. A couple of hours later, I woke up questioning whether she had come home or if it was a dream. Within a few seconds, I located the stuff she had brought in and I drifted off again. It didn't take long for me to wake up again but pain woke me this time. Melissa and I got a chance to talk before the pain overwhelmed me. It looks like I won't be going to New York for this trip because I would have to spend four straight days traveling. With that sort of pain, I would require all of Melissa's attention and end up leaving her feeling helpless. She needs that attention for Barbara. After all, we're still making the November trip so that Melissa can go to the wedding. That's a more reasonable explanation for me and it broke down my resistance.

Don't worry. I still feel like the sack of potatoes that no one wants. It's my feeling that I own not something that comes from the outside. One of the reasons why I've been so desperate for sleep is that managing my disability is a full time job yet I seek to give my life additional meaning. My writing is super-important to me because it's my way of leaving my mark on the world. If I didn't write it down, no one would know that I seek a world (as in my own little world around me) without blame? How would certain people out there know that they aren't the only ones down and out with pain?

I was awake long enough to eat then meditated to set my pain aside but fell asleep until the pain woke me up one more time. This was when Melissa took advantage of me being awake to excuse herself for sleep. I know that I need some horizontal sleep sooner or later but I had indigestion bordering on the threat of reflux and realized that lying down might be a bad idea in the short term. After that, I woke up long enough for me to crash again but I had my bedtime meds in me this time after going nearly a week without them. Pain, fatigue and medicine combined to knock me out for something close to eight hours.

Melissa and I are overwhelmed by everything going on around us. Today's big goal is getting an insurance check deposited in the bank. I decided to take charge of this last night when I realized that something was holding Melissa back. It's no big deal but it looked like one to her because she needed my help to break it down into manageable tasks. The first will be me making a phone call to confirm that nothing special needs to be done with the check and, presuming there's nothing new and exciting to do, the second will be Melissa making the deposit on her way to work. I need to wait another half hour for the credit union to open and then I'll make the call.

Living the 24 Hour Day

Back when I started college, some of my professors were bemoaning "life in the 24 news cycle." Due to the relatively new phenomenon of the 24 hour cable news network, already shabby TV journalism was falling apart at the seams. My concentration was on political news in the afterglow of President Clinton's first election. In the days before the 24 hour news cycle, you expected news to follow the sort of pattern that a relatively healthy adult might live in the prime of life. I figure we'll call it eight hours of news just so the math works out right. Around the time Clinton began his first term, a lot of people were getting all news all the time or something along those lines. Then, people in politics were doing the same amount of work (a lot more than 8 hours but that doesn't matter) and the 24 hour news cycle came along.

News declined from Walter Cronkite being trusted in every living room to Faux News' "Manifestly Unfair and Psychotically Imbalanced" (in my honest yet humble opinion, of course) over the course of my first decade of paying attention to the news. Some of it was genuinely malicious stuff that would have been illegal in the U.K. but most of it was the result of people competing for those advertising dollars generated by those looking for political commentary at four in the morning. President Clinton got both varieties in vast quantities from the supposedly liberal media but I'm not going there. This is a segue into the fact that I am that person looking for something to do at four in the morning.

I've been living the 24 hour day for quite a while now but I've been healthy enough for others to notice it this month. One example came in the form of good old Linda Johnson and her hospital stay. It ended up being benign as these things go so I can use it. Linda posted on Facebook that she was going into the hospital with some heart trouble. She's okay now. Judging by the standards of my casual friendships since I got sick, we've been somewhat close. She read Blahthings back when I was terribly serious about it all and we exchanged emails regularly. That would be regularly averaging out to something like once a month over a decade or so.

With my new chair and my tablet computer allowing me to be more active online using less energy, her hospital stay got exposed to my version of the 24 hour news cycle. First, it was a quick post about two sick people and one who just happened to be stretching her metaphorical social legs. Melissa might have made some polite inquiry at home so I posted again. Pretty soon, I was surfing those neurotic waves we insomniacs know and even love sometimes. I had all this nervous energy and I was concerned about Barbara so I was thinking about hospitals and Linda was in the hospital and... If I were on TV, I'd have gotten to the point of having the graphics department come up with something in a special font: "Linda Health Watch: 2013."

I'm sorry if I offended with my excess of attention. This is the point where the serotonin and other neurotransmitters produced by my insomnia and my arthritis flareup stopped making things funny for me. It's not a pity party but a mere physical fact. I'm fresh out of good humor.

I don't know why my arthritis is flaring up so badly. I'm in a temperature controlled environment but it seems awfully humid in here which is just weird. Humid is supposed to be what an AC unit handles best. It wasn't just my joints that hurt. My muscles joined in on the fun and that hints at a fibro flareup. Of course, I'm running low on sleep or I think I am. Didn't I lose Sunday to sleep? I sure remember the dream about being some brain sucking alien invader but one with remorse issues so I was trying to make things right with the humans. Maybe pod people dreams reflect a lack of restful sleep.

What I do know is that I had an epic fail moment in the husband department today. We got some good news - we think - on the sudden flood of sick people who aren't me (or Linda) which pretty much narrows it down for you. The good news resulted in someone (who lives here as a human but isn't me) getting emotional. I tried the hug until it's better routine but my knees ended up slightly bent and...well...arthritis flareup! The white hot agony in my knees pretty much triggered all of the other pains to flare up which left me sitting in my recliner while Melissa tried to be superhuman. If I can't help people understand their human limitations, I don't know what I'm good for because I pretty much am one big limitation.

That thought translated for me into one stomach twisting, want to despair but it isn't my turn combination. I need to be there for Melissa when the shit goes down. (While the good news plays out, there's bound to be tension and dysfunctional behavior so it's a little like bad news while you wait.) I need to be there for her and I'm starting to hear reasons why I can't be there for her. What do I do when I have to be there and I can't be there? Well, whether or not it's really for her, I have to make a choice and endure. I know from experience that almost any physical pain is preferable to being separated but I also know she was making preliminary plans involving exactly that.

This day is just full of the realization that other people are more important to me than I am to them. I'm used to it or so I think.

On the Slow Road

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.

Back in the Middle of the Road

Once upon a time, I remember stating that it would be my purpose to find some happy medium and live in it. Since then, I've changed the model so that coping with illness is my full time job. I think it suits me better because I'm never just drifting along in the middle. Today will be a very busy day. We are supposed to have a Nor'easter plow through and anyone who has had neurosurgery knows how closely linked barometric pressure and pain are. It also happens to be Pain Doc Day in seven hours or so. It would be nice if the two events would merge and someone would just give me a shot to put me out for the duration but it doesn't work that way. On a personal level, it would create a temptation to just get a shot every time bad weather rolled through. On my doctors' professional levels, it would mean having some professional care for me the entire time monitoring me and that still wouldn't be enough. I just reserve the right to be grouchy (preferably in a humorous way) and hope not to be grumpy (the non-joking version of angry) if someone chooses to drug test me today. It would be painful and I don't want to say why. I would do it and presumably pass on the retest but I will not promise good grace.

There will be days when I will not be busy at all like yesterday and the day before. It took all three cats but they managed to prevent me from staying awake the excruciating full 24 hours. That's approaching 30 pounds of cat which was enough to make me yell when one or more stood on my more or less permanently sore ankles. I could investigate it but that would require seeing doctors and this is a bad day to even discuss that. I snoozed most of the day which is what I like to call it when I'm not deeply asleep most of the time but suitably relaxed. There was some "NHL 2011" on the PS3 involved but I played in general manager mode. When you don't have cable so no one is trying to use the TV, you can wait as long as you want between moves.

This past evening (October 9th in case it takes me a while to finish and post), I finished reading Book Three in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I know there are ways it can be prevented so that should be a sufficient sop to fate but I expect The Last Dark to be in my hands on the morning of October 15th. Anyone who wishes to lose something important should bother me that day. In all honesty, I should ration my reading to avoid concentration headaches and because we won't be seeing any more Covenant books from my favorite author. These last four books have been wrapping up the story in a way the previous series didn't and that ended with Covenant's death. I've been predicting his return since 1987 so you might say I've grown up with the character. Every time I read the books, I find new insights into writing and life as well as the Land. When I say this series has wrapped up the story pretty well so far, I could put it in terms that my fellow "Star Wars" fans could appreciate. Donaldson has given us a perspective on the Land that might as well be compared to starting off with the founding of the Jedi Knights and ending with some future legacy of Luke Skywalker. (Damned browser's intrusive spellchecker wanted me to call him Luke Jaywalker. I'll call him Farm boy all I want but never a jaywalker.) I look forward to this last book with bittersweet anticipation.

I'm full of seething concern for friends and family right now. I don't know if I have mentioned here that my sister-in-law, Barbara, has thyroid cancer. I know I've posted on Facebook. Right now, we have too little information to do anything but worry. Linda McCune Johnson has been a long time friend and reader when I was desperate for readers to help me earn my oxygen. Things are better for me now but Linda is in the hospital with heart trouble involving fluid. I might need to let the cats nap me now since there's nothing I can do about anything.

Okay. Time has passed. It's almost 24 hours after I started this post and things are clearing up. My sister-in-law is not yet laying claim to my throne as the sickest person in the family. She's hoping as I do that a simple (by the standards of surgery) operation will cure her cancer. Honestly, we're not that competitive. It's more a matter of knowing how sick someone would have to be in order to steal my throne. No one should have to go through that. Regular reader Linda remains incommunicado which makes sense a little more than 24 hours after getting admitted to the hospital with heart problems. We all need to designate someone who will put information online in the event that we are too sick to handle it ourselves. I was worried about a friend who had changed her online habits suddenly from being very closed to very open but she replied to my email. She's okay. The openness thing is just a change.

The change is a nice segue to the original purpose of this post. With my brand new chair in the house, I have rediscovered the joys of not being uncomfortable in addition to being in pain. My body has stored up so much tension and fatigue from the old broken chair that I all but fall asleep the moment I let the chair recline. It doesn't bother me the way it did before because I wake up feeling better than when I fell asleep. It feels so much less like I'm running a race and falling further behind the pack with each lap. My improved mood probably started with the least painful appointment I've had at the Pain Doc's office. I was already in pain but they caused me no additional pain.

Meekers gave me a feel good moment less than an hour ago. She's the bravest of our cats and the most vocal but bravest is the key here. I got up out of the chair to write this comfortably at my desk and Meek was settled in my chair almost before I was out of it. This made me feel irrationally angry for a second or two before I decided that it was okay. She's smart for wanting to occupy the most comfortable chair in the house and then she did the sweetest thing. She saw that I was headed upstairs and she followed me giving up her comfy spot in the process. I think she's with Melissa right now who is sleeping like most sane people at 5 AM but she's sweet anyway. She chose the comfort of her family over the heavenly chair.

Despite the fact that a friend was accurate in describing my house as a campground earlier today, I feel intensely lucky. After Melissa managed to sleep through my morning of moaning in pain, she stopped off at the liquor store and bought me a six pack of Guinness Extra Stout bottles. That alone would have been a small treasure. The Guinness Extra Stout is a nice sipping beer that won't break the bank in the event of getting guzzled accidentally. It has the pleasant combination of strong flavor and that "stick to your ribs" feeling that people used to apply to oatmeal. It tastes great and is more filling so you really can drink just one. That helps my doctors feel better about me. The greater treasure was a 750 ml. bottle of Chimay's Trappist Grand Reserve 2012. I love Belgian ales and Belgian Trappist (aka Abbey) ales are among my favorites. I don't think I've ever tasted a bad brew from Belgium but my favorite depends on my mood. Once I laid my greedy eyes on that bottle of Chimay, I found myself in a mood for Trappist ale.

I could catalog the bad things in my life right now but there would be no point. It's the same old shit with a different day. Thanks to my parents walking out of my life peacefully, it takes more to bother me. My full time job is managing a life of chronic pain and I think I'm pretty good at it. I oppose despair with joy. Every time I start to think about how hopeless my quest to get published professionally again might be, I'm reminded of the simple joy of creation. Every time I feel as though I cannot do anything beyond sit in a chair, I remember to play one of my Pearl Jam CDs. I was bemoaning a lack of new Pearl Jam last winter and their new album will be out in a few days. Melissa reminded me of life beyond Pearl Jam by finding a copy of Green Day's "American Idiot."

It all comes back to Melissa and it has throughout our marriage and the events leading up to it. Without Melissa, I might not even want to go see my favorite band. I'm terrified of crowds and I was raised to be paralyzed by my fear of disappointment. She finds joy in my joy and vice versa. If I were condemned to sit and watch the grass grow, it wouldn't be so bad as long as she were with me. There are great events in life like Pearl Jam concerts but most of it is pretty routine. There's no one out there I'd rather have with me through the good, the bad and the impossibly boring. That might be one definition of love.