MUCKING AROUND THE CORNERS

DARKNESS FALLS EVEN IN THE GLOOM

There are times where I feel as though I am holding on to whatever I am holding onto with a white-knuckle grip and I am being battered by the debris field of an ongoing storm.  I choose to hold on because it is my instinct and letting go seems to me so much the worse option. 

I don’t spend a lot of time talking about my disability affecting me in any way primarily because I am still, ‘going out after it’, in regards to living a full life.  There have been a lot of things that I feel has gone or broke favorably for me the last couple of years and I don’t anticipate that stopping anytime soon.  After all, luck is the residue of hard work, and I do put in my work!  Yet I think that not only does my disability get overlooked, but the consequences of my condition as well.

Sometimes I have tried to sit down and talk about what goes on with me but I get frustrated with how I describe what I go through each day.  Trying to talk about the fatigue and unexpected soreness that I deal with or the sleepless nights, seems so common that for me to mention it, well, doesn’t really sound like its ‘disabling’ now does it?  But it is all a part of my injury and a host of other things that are ‘no big deal’ to most people, which are for me, are hurdles that I have to deal with every single moment of every single day.  I don’t ever put off onto my condition something that I don’t want to take responsibility for because of an action that I was conscious of.  Yet and still…

Over the last few months I have done things to people that I care about that I have no idea of where the motivation to do them came from.  I cannot explain why I chose my actions or what drove me to even think that they were appropriate.  After the fact I was able to see how egregious my lapse was and how hurtful I truly was.

The thing about my acts is that they are all out of character.  The instant that my transgression has been brought to my attention, I don’t even recognize the person who did them, only that my fingerprints are on the scene and I was at said place and at said time, so it had to have been me, even as unrecognizable as the act was when I accounted for my character.  In short, I am taking what for me is an unprecedented step and putting off onto another entity partial responsibility for something that I have done.

It is with great deliberation that I say this because while it may have been a possibility floating in my stream of consciousness, by this admission that my behavior, my thinking, has become noticeably compromised is a grave concern.  Another consideration is the medication that I am taking to manage some of what I cope with.  Since near the first quarter of this year I have been on different medications, some of them the same only in a different dosage, and I do think that has played a part in my behavior as well.  While it is with much chagrin that I pawn some of my erratic behavior on these two components of my person, I have no other choice.  To claim what I did as ‘me’ would mean that there is some kind of explanation or reason for my actions and there simply is none at all.  Not even a trace of anything that I can point to and say, “Oh, I did it because…” and either takes correction or makes one and move from there.

The barest scent of anything that I would have recognize of me were in anything that I did, and still it was too thin to have been explained.  But it was enough for me to realize that it DID come from me and that whatever happened to the thoughts premise on its way to the world was beyond my conscious control.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO…

…Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do!

There is a reason that people constantly regret not following their ‘first thought’ or initial premonition.  Even as circumstance change, when it comes to that first brief flash of cognition that takes place in the subconscious, things come back that moment when inertia became motion and stuff started to happen and control was given over to ‘whatever’ and became ‘just anything’.

While a lot of things have changed and a lot of other things had happened before I got to Omaha, what really never changed were my expectations of me and the course that I had charted.

Recently, an entry of Sherry’s that I found myself nodding in agreement with as I read seemed to capture the ‘confustration’ of dealing with issues that affect you every day and are never going to go away.  Some people feel that it is part of their duty to remind you that others have had to deal with similar circumstance and they were able to blah, blah, blah.  What, do you not think that I am aware that others who have still have gone forward and lived full and satisfactory lives, some even excelling at what they do?  As much ESPN as I watch, I get enough of Merrill Hoge to know that there is still a bar that is quite high for me to aim for.  That isn’t something that I need to hear or, at times like this, even want to hear.  What I do want and prolly could use is a bit of understanding.  And my most recent misstep was a clear demonstration of why I think that it would be difficult if not unlikely, for me to find that special ‘someone who is that someone’, to share and spend quality time with.  Did I mention that I have expectations and ‘must haves’ in a partner?  

And a lot of what I need was demonstrated ably by the response my friend had as we resolved our 'whatevers'.  It was respectful and allowed the both of us to not only remain friends but to for me to hold on to my dignity.  That was a win-win.  But so many are simply out for 'them' and cannot see beyond their own sense of propriety and would take for themselves that which is available for everyone alike...