Sunday, May 8, 2011

8 days / a week

that's about how long it's going to take for me to get the results of the needle biopsy I had Thursday.

I have often said in these "pages" that the hardest work anyone has to do sometimes is to find a comfortable position.

that, faithful readers, is my full time occupation now.

and I am achieving some kind of success in my field. yesterday had long stretches that just plain weren't bad. slept great last night.
mornings, before I get up, are near pain free. I allowed myself the thought that maybe I was getting a break, that some miraculous way the pain from the big ol' tumor in my shoulder was lessening.
the minute I sat up and began to type this, my relationship partner let me know it wasn't happy with me.
what? what did I do?
I had a music night last night with lisa, kathy, and debra. played the rosewood Gryphon...the band sounded good. I had decided to take the day off, and had not done much, just to see if that would keep me out of some trouble - it worked. I felt a little ache playing, but all in all it was great.
it's been for awhile that standing, walking, has brought on the trouble. carrying things...trouble. sitting usually takes the pain away pronto.
but typing...sometimes...not easy. editing in pro tools today kind of achy.

twenty minutes on the stationary bike tonight...as opposed to the stationery bike, an origami marvel...was no problem...hurt less than standing up.
today I had a massage...a blessing from lisa...which felt great throughout...took an aleve as part of the furthering of science, did a stint in the hot tub...all of which helped.

but tomorrow, I do not know what will hurt and what will not, what I am going to be able to do and what I won't.
there is no other course than to prepare for both the best and the worst life has to offer. these spring days. the music I am doing. the support I am getting.
and trying to maintain a sense of tumor.

people say, I would take your pain for you if I could.
I promise, my cohearts, the world would be absolutely no better of a place if you did.
and I know, and you should know, in a very real, solid way, you already are.
people say, what can I do?
I know how completely I am being done for, accepted, provided for. and I know that what I am doing makes staying positive and life seeking kind of harder to stick with for everyone I am in relationship with.
I know that my worries, my hurt, the new health concerns, are not enough to make anyone change the way they are living, accept and partner with life in a fuller way, take better care of themself, do their work...that's not how things work, what propagates a change. people have to hit their own wall, and decide that hitting it this time is enough.
but
if I could
what I would reply,
is:
reconsider throwing the miracles you have in your life away because you are so angry about the miracles you didn't get.

there are certain symbols of having a good life that I've never had.
most, I just don't care about ever having. a Pyramid. the palace at Versailles. Olympic ice skating medal. an FBI black listing.
Francis Ford Coppola was once told he had a reputation for being obsessive about all things in his films. he said, no. there are many many things about film making I don't care about at all, and I let them go dreadfully. but the ones that matter to me really matter.
I have always held on to the anger of the outsider. in my family. in grade school and high school.
that show, Branded, that showed Chuck Connors being stripped of the medals on his uniform, standing like a bronze while gaping holes were made over his heart...those holes were my uniform, were my medals.
my family gave me all the experience and indoctrination to insure that I would be a good outsider in school. I felt that my appearance was derisible, though now I'm not sure whether it wasn't just my look instead...that my body was uncoordinated to the point of being a cripple, though from the vantage of today it seems to have enabled me quite well throughout my life.
I am fond of saying I never succumbed to peer pressure about drugs or alcohol because I was never able to find a peer. but there weren't many traditional rites of passage for a person or a male in the culture of growing up that I went through.

I hated, and envied bitterly, the same people in the same breaths. I cursed life for the miracles others had that I would never have.
part of me isn't done.

but these days, I feel like I have been riding around in a Mercedes all my life, enraged because someone had ripped the peace sign hood ornament off my car.
whatever symbols I have or have not had...I have had an enfranchised life. I have always been one of "the people". I know it now.
still mad.
but, sometimes, I don't let it convince me to throw away the miracles I have had all my life in protest.

what you can do for me is see if you will make the same choice sometime.

writing this, now, I am not hurting.



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