The 12th Day

It has been 12 days since I last swallowed a prescription medication.  I’m better than I was last week, but still not without withdrawal symptoms.  The underlying unease has lessened so that now it is a slight headache with mild nausea.  Occasionally it suddenly worsens, usually with no warning, and I’ve had a few instances where I’ve felt like I was going to pass out or throw-up or both.  It happened in Target today.  I went to the gym this afternoon, and felt really good for it.  After my workout, I showered and went directly to the store.  By the time I got there I had a headache, and I was having a little bit of disorientation, but it wasn’t too bad.  Mostly I just kept forgetting what I was there to buy.  But by the time I was down to the last few items on my list I was light-headed and in a cold sweat.  I felt like I was going to pass out or fall down, and had to lean on the cart through checkout.  I’m not sure what triggered it – I had been doing just fine earlier.  I do wonder if it has to do with the fact that I have been having a hard time eating.

Food seems like it will be good, and I’ve gone to the effort to make some of my favorite comfort foods in bulk so that I will have something I want to eat.  But at least half the time I make the meal, take a bite or two and then throw the rest away.  It just makes me feel ill.  Coffee too makes me sick – one cup and I have the shakes and I feel like I need to throw-up.  Alcohol doesn’t even sound good, and the one time I had a couple of drinks, I was so sick that it felt like I’d regressed almost a full week in the withdrawals.  Even tea, which is normally my go to for just about anything that ails me, is making me ill.  Twice today I made tea from my favorite loose leaves and ended up either dumping it out or pouring it into a jar that I hope I might be able to drink later.  They smelled good, but when I went to drink them I just knew they would make me ill.  Ginger is the only spice that is working for me at this point.  We had a very unfortunate incident with curry on Saturday that was not the curry’s fault, but none the less resulted in an unpleasant afternoon.  The tea thing is a little distressing, but the rest of it isn’t inherently bad.  Dropping or seriously cutting back on my alcohol and caffeine is something I’ve been trying to do for a while.  And sweets aren’t that appealing either, except ginger and black licorice candies – and one can only eat so much of that.

I do wonder how long this is going to continue.  I’ve wanted to do some day trips over the holidays, but I don’t feel well enough to venture too far from home.  I have a couple of business trips lined up for the end of the month, and I’m seriously hoping that I’m doing considerably better before then – otherwise it could be brutal.  Public outreach on emotionally charged legislation always is.  Doing it with what is essentially a narcotic hangover does not help in the slightest.

Last week I told my doctor about tapering and quitting the Cymbalta.  He was upset with me, but acknowledged that I did it correctly.  Mostly, though, he told me that I was exaggerating the severity of the withdrawal symptoms.  That I should be over it already.  That it just cannot be as bad as I say.  Because there is almost no mention of withdrawal in the official drug documentation.  I was insulted, and more than a little irritated when he said I was making more of it than necessary.  I shrugged it off but my next visit with him will be my last.  I need to close all the loops with my care so that I can resolve my files and start over with my new insurance and new doctors.  I still struggle with how dysfunctional the healthcare system is in the U.S.  I’ve come to believe that this is the result of a profit oriented capital healthcare market.  I’m full socialist on this one – and I know that my experience has been far less difficult or expensive that many others.

There are two side effects of the withdrawals that are surprising in almost a good way.  First, I get a runner’s high super easy during my workout.  None of that spending 3 miles working up to it.  It hit in the first mile today and stuck with me throughout the whole workout.  It really makes putting in the gym time easier when it feels good at the time.  Second, my libido seems to be waking up.  I’ve been single for the last three years, with one of those in severe pain and the other two drugged up.  My counselor and then the psychiatrist have been after me to try dating and consider looking for a relationship.  When I was in pain, I didn’t want to drag someone else into my life so that they would have to deal with me like that.  It didn’t seem kind or fun or helpful for anyone.  After I got on the drugs and started having regular surgeries on my back, it just seemed like way too much trouble.  TME – Too Much Effort.  I did a handful of online dates – because when both your friends and your doctors are laying down the pressure, it becomes TME to deal with them, and it is easier to let the online process just fail on its own – because it most definitely will fail if it isn’t actively worked and cultivated and provided dedicated time and labor and other things that are also TME.  I had no desire for a relationship or a partner or even sex.  My body felt numb, when it wasn’t hurting, and my emotions had no flavor, no aroma, no color.  Especially after I accepted the defeat handed to me at my workplace by my then boss.  I was going through the motions.  Well, lo and behold, my nerve endings are starting to wake back up.  Yeah, the pain is significantly worse.  My back and hips ache pretty much constantly, and I can ignore it about 80% of the time.  The rest of the time I’m trying to “lean into it” to do whatever I need to do to get it below the threshold where it gets in my way.  So there is that.  But then other nerve endings are also waking up.  My skin feels different.  The muscles in my legs and my core are more responsive.  And every once in a while I find a person catching my attention with their attractiveness or their appeal.  That hasn’t happened in a very long time.  It feels strange and it surprises just about every time.  Who knows, maybe someday the idea of a relationship won’t be TME to consider.

But probably not before I quit feeling like I’m nurturing the worlds longest hang-over.

How I Quit Cymbalta (Spoiler: It Sucked)

No matter how well you plan your Cymbalta detox, it will suck, and you will have no idea how long it will take, and how long you will feel like shit.  There are things you can do to make it as short and as tolerable as it can be for you.  This is what I did, and what I should have done better.

I decided to get off the Cymbalta after a surprise withdrawal event stemming from a delay in refilling my prescription.  Turns out, this is a very common reason people decide to get off the drug.  It is almost always a very unpleasant and frightening surprise, and apart from the range of other side effects, which are mentioned in passing in the drug’s documentation, goes unmentioned in any official marketing – at least it wasn’t mentioned in what I saw.

Once I decided I was done with the drug, I did my homework about how other people survived the withdrawals and came up with a plan.

Step 1. Taper.  Cold-Turkey only sounds macho until you are falling down the stairs and tossing your cookies on the way.  Brain-zaps may sound like something you’d pay good money for from your dealer behind the mini-mart, but in reality they feel like your brain wiring has shorted and you are being electrocuted by your own nerves.  You will be dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented, with limited control over your body, including your digestive tract, and the extent that you can reduce the severity of these symptoms will make the whole attempt more successful.  I have stupid strong will-power when it comes to enduring pain, and I could not handle cold-turkey.

PRO TIP: Take your time on the taper.  I rushed it.  I was scared/sick of the drug and I wanted off of it so badly that I only tapered for two weeks.  It takes 3 days before the reduction in the drug starts to really impact most people (including me) and I would have been better off to have done the taper over two months or more – I am almost positive that my withdrawal would have been less severe.  The problem is that the drug manufacturers don’t support a way to easily taper off the drug, so you’re going to have to open the capsules and remove pellets, and it is annoying and time consuming, and a constant reminder of how this subversive drug has taken command of your reasoning, because seriously, breaking open capsules and counting pellets is not something that a sane person would do.  No matter, do it.  I wish I had.

Step 2. Schedule.  You are going to feel like shit for a while after your last dose, no matter how gently you taper.  You will probably start to feel like shit during your taper (I did) and scheduling your withdrawal to align with your work and life as best you can will be helpful.  I live alone and between Christmas and New Years are the slow periods for my work, so I planned to deal with my withdrawals during the holidays when I could lock myself up in my house and be sick by myself without it having a major impact on my job.  If you can plan around at least a week worth of feeling like you have the flu/a migraine/a hang over/and you’ve just come off the teacups at the fair, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Step 3. Tell your family/friends/boss what you’re doing.  This is probably the only time you’ll ever get to warn someone in advance about a major illness you are going to experience and exactly when you are going to experience it.  It will make it easier for when the withdrawals last longer than you’d hoped and you have to bail on that one critical conference call because you can’t leave your toilet for that long.

PRO TIP: Soft toilet paper and wet-wipes are a must.  You may or may not vomit (I did) but you will have the runs… for days.  And Days.  Aaaannnnd Days.  Especially if you taper too fast.  Best to be prepared.

Step 4. Supplements are your friend.  The supplement that has done the best by me is the Fish Oil – especially after I found the kind you can take that Doesn’t leave you burping halibut fumes all day.  If you’re like me, you’ll want to take twice the daily dosage, and especially for the first week of withdrawals, you’ll probably want to take them twice a day.  I finally got the krill oil (cuz it’s all about the Omega 3s, baby) and when the “head stuff” (aka dizziness, disorientation, confusion, headache, brain-zaps, etc.) gets bad, I find that a dose of the krill oil starts to help within about an hour.  Other things that have helped immensely is dramamine (or any other motion-sickness medicine) and your favorite anti-nausea medicine.  You’ll also want to drink A LOT of water.  I kept feeling dehydrated, and I found that drinking water also helped with the “head stuff”, so I’ve turned it into a game to see how clear I can pee.  Yes, I lead a very exciting and fulfilling life.

PRO TIP: Herbal tea is both calming and can be good for the hydration.  I have a detox tea that I like and that I feel helped me feel a little less disoriented.  Probably placebo effect.  Don’t care, love my teapot.

Step 5. Prepare food ahead of time.  Once you take that final dose of the Cymbalta, it is a countdown to the withdrawals.  After they hit, I had absolutely no ability to drive, or really to even walk very far.  I’d stocked up on brothy soups beforehand, and they were just right.  My appetite disappeared, but adding light-headed-ness from lack of food to the full body punishment of withdrawals was a bad idea (hence the falling down the stairs).  Soups worked really well for me.  Easy to prepare foods will work best, especially if you are on your own and can’t stand for more than a few minutes without feeling like you’re going to fall down/pass out/vomit/cry/shit yourself/all-of-the-above-at-the-same-time.

Step 6. Move as much as you can.  I’m on day 6 of withdrawals today.  Today I went to work (and left early).  I walked my dog.  I did laundry.  Yesterday, I made soup and did laundry.  The day before I made soup and took a bath.  The day before that (day of true hell) I took a bath.  The day before that I had a migraine (it was the first withdrawal symptom for me) and I scrambled to get everything ready for what was to come.  Tomorrow I will go to my doctor and tell him what I have done (he was not supportive the first time I mentioned quitting the Cymbalta, but then again, he’s lost my trust at this point), and I will go to work, and after work, I will hit the gym.  Not hard.  Easy like, a pat or a little poke even.  Unless I feel worse.  No way to know for sure.  I do know though that if I’m moving and doing something I feel a little less bad than I do when I’m not doing anything.  I expect that I will still being having problems with dizziness and confusion and brain zaps this time next week, though I hope it will be better.  I might have them the week after that.  I’m prepared for that.

UP SIDES!!!  I’ve lost 5 lbs since about half way through the taper – without changing much else.  Course, five days of soup has probably helped.  Also, I haven’t been drinking.  Because there is no way I could handle a buzz on top of the rest of it.  No way in hell.  I also have more energy than when I was on the drug.  My brain feels clearer (despite the “head stuff”) and I feel more like myself.  The pain is there, but it isn’t as bad as it was (or, and this is far more likely, my pain thresholds have been re-set to something much higher) and, above all, I know I made the right choice getting off this drug.  I have no doubts.  None.

Ok.  The toilet’s calling me… again.  Maybe, if I have enough energy left, I’ll touch in again tomorrow.  Maybe it is time to be back in the world again.  Maybe.  🙂

Mind the Gap

Two years and change and everything is different, and yet similar enough to be uncomfortably familiar.  It feels like I’m on a road that, while I’ve never exactly traveled it myself, I’ve observed folk walking it for a while.  I’ve seen the Google Street-views.  I’ve looked at the maps and the obvious landmarks.  I’ve been on my way to this road for a long time.

Recap: in Feb of 2014 I started having severe back pain.  Osteo-arthritis, of the type experienced by folks of advancing age, except I was 37.  My career was devolving into a job, my romantic efforts imploded, my finances were floundering, and Everything Hurt All The Time.  I put up with it for a long time, trying to find different ways of managing the many fraying threads of my life.  And, as one does when one has a modicum of faith in any massive institution, I finally turned to the health care system for help.  I did wait until I had lost all ability to function outside of work.  Priorities, ya know.  And then when I did go to the medical-industrial complex for assistance, I found that I needed every ounce of energy and capacity I could muster to navigate the continual comedy of errors that is the scheduling, billing, referral, and appointment practices that have become the standard of care in this fine nation.  I’m not talking Affordable Care Act stuff.  I’m talking standard employer provided Cadillac insurance funded care.  Since my “diagnosis”, I’ve had 7 surgical procedures, 5 of which were administered with little or no anesthesia.  Of all the things I thought I knew about myself, the ability to not flinch while a doctor inserts a 3′ needle into the joints in my spine was not on the list.  But turns out one can learn to do astonishing things when one is lying on a metal table in an operating room with one’s arms and legs pinned down by sympathetic nurses while a surgeon repeatedly attempts to hit the right nerve in the right joint as guided by an X-ray with Zero tolerance for vibration.  (Fyi, the worst of it was a total of 42 attempts at 6 injection sites.  That was not a good day.)

When you’re dealing with this kind of physical struggle, it’s easy for the mind to lose balance.  Add in job stress and failed relationships and a prediliction for depression, and you’ll find yourself alternating those visits to the spine clinic with visits to the psychiatrist.  Next thing you know you’re on anti-inflamatories, muscle relaxers, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, meds to make you sleep, meds to help you wake up, meds to keep you from freaking out, and meds to counter the side effects of the other meds.  You’re picking stuff up from the pharmacy weekly, and in bulk.  Something is ALWAYS running out of refills, and you have a collection of translucent orange pill bottles that spill out of the cupboard every time you open it.  You have reminders set on your phone to tell you when to take what so that you keep some semblance of routine, and your life just sort of fades into the background – it’s what happens between the reminders.

Or at least that is what happened to me.

Tonight I can delete the reminders.

First, I got a new job.  I almost blew it 9 months in when my sixth surgical procedure (neurotomy) wore off and the pain came back.  There was some drama.  Soul searching happened.  And I pulled my head out of my ass and tried to really understand what was happening to me.  The drugs.  I was on too many drugs.  I started dropping them one by one.  First the anti-anxiety meds, then the sleeping meds and the wake-up meds.  Then the muscle relaxers.  One by one I weaned off each of them.  All but one.  Cymbalta.  Oh god, the Cymbalta.

Cymbalta, for the uninitiated, is an anti-depressant that is also used to treat chronic pain.  It works, sort of, at least for me it sort of worked.  It dulled the pain – especially the nerve pain that was a byproduct of my rapidly degenerating spine.  As for the depression – I quit thinking about suicide all the time, which is good.  But then I also quit caring about much of anything.  Probably less good, but at the time I didn’t care, so there is that.

Cymbalta was marketed as a wonder drug for people afflicted with depression and chronic pain, and I took it as prescribed – right up until that week last summer when I ran out of refills when my doctor was on vacation and had to do without for 4 days.  Note the “was marketed” in the prior sentence.  Somewhere in the standard list of 99 side effects there should have been some warning about what happens when you quit cold turkey and go into withdrawal.  Something, anything, even in the tiny print, even that would have been helpful.  Nope.  No warning – not from the drug provider or my doctor, and while I wasn’t in tip top shape at the time, if someone had mentioned to me that coming off the drug was very much like getting the flu, a migraine, and a hangover all at once, while feeling like you’ve just come off the teacups at the County Fair, I might have elected for a different treatment.  Oh, and the flu-migraine-hang over-teacuppiness?  It lasts for days.  Weeks even.  It depends on how long you’ve taken the medication.  I had been taking it for 18 months when I had that first taste of withdrawal.  It was enough to get me to raise a ruckus and get my prescription refilled pronto.

But it got me thinking.  What is the difference between what I was doing and an addiction?  Was it actually helping?  What, outside of work, was going even remotely right in my life?  I’d given up all of my sports and athletic activities.  I’d quit going to the gym on any regular schedule.  I’d given up on my music and my social life and relationships.  All I did was work.  It was all I had the energy for – put in my time, come home, pour a drink, and lay on the sofa until it was time to go to bed.  Oversleep the next morning because it was so damn hard to wake up (I could easily sleep 12 or 16 hours night after night – not good sleep, weird creepy nightmare sleep) and then do the whole thing again.  Weekends I slept.  Holidays I slept.  If I wasn’t working, I was laying on the sofa.  Or I slept.  How was the Cymbalta improving this lifestyle?  It wasn’t.  And I realized then that it wasn’t something that I could just quit either.  Not without losing a couple of weeks of work being almost unbearably sick.  So I did my homework and came up with a detox scheme.

First this, the scariest and hardest thing about coming off Cymbalta has been the uncertainty.  A flu eventually goes away.  A hang over lasts a day or two.  A migraine will respond to a heavy narcotic if nothing else helps.  Teacups just require a bit of puking and you’re good to go.  Cymbalta withdrawals last anywhere from a week to months, depending on your metabolism and the length of time you were on the drug and countless other factors that have never been studied because the drug manufacturer decided that only 1 to 2 percent of people have withdrawal symptoms.  Actually withdrawals happen to between 50 and 80 percent of people who take the drug, and more than 50 percent of people who experience withdrawal symptoms have them for more than 2 weeks.

None of that is in the marketing.

What all this means is that no matter how well you plan your detox, you still have no idea how long it will take, how long you will feel like shit.  There are things you can do to make it as short and as tolerable as it can be for you, but you will still have withdrawals, they will still suck, and you still won’t know how long it will last.

I’m on day 6 of withdrawals today.  Today I went to work.  I walked my dog.  I did laundry.  And I’m writing this post.  And the next post because I don’t want to make anyone looking for potential support in kicking this drug to have to read through all of the above…

 

TBC.

The High Road

Someone has to take it, the high road.  Otherwise we’d all be crammed on the low road, cutting each other off and boiling in our own road rage while we try to blame everyone else for the fact that we aren’t going anywhere.

Fact,  The high road is lonely.  And when you drag people along with you on the high road, they often forget whatever it was that they were so upset about in the first place.  They’re just happy to be on the high road, with the good view and the comfy seats and the attendants that bring the bottomless mimosa.

It’s easy to feel maligned.  Anger is the easiest emotion ever, and we get a bonus if we feel victimized in the process.  Victims can do whatever they want.

Fact, we all mess up.  You owe apologies to more people than you can even remember.  As do I.  We are not the victims here.  Even when we are victims, we are not the only ones.  Evil does not spawn from the ether.  It is grown and nurtured and developed, like a prize animal, to be presented and rewarded.  We create – nay, we support the things we hate.

Fact, even when your body quits working like it should, and even when your hips hurt and your pelvis aches, and you are fairly certain that your back is literally on fire – that the bones are burning like bbq charcoals in your back, cooking the tissue and gradually turning you into a over-decorated rack of lamb – even then you want sex.

And you don’t want mediocre sex.  You want the sex that will ruin you – that will leave you unable to walk, and unable to stand, and utterly satisfied.

And it is times like this that you remember that such a thing doesn’t exist.  Not for you.

Surgery is a scary thing, even when it is minor and you know it will most likely go your way.  There are risks.  You are relying on other people in the most intimate of ways.  This isn’t the one night stand, where you can rely on the condom to take the brunt of the action.  No, this is far more intimate.   It is someone breaking and entering through your skin.  Pilfering through your bones and ligaments and tendons and muscles for some bit of treasure.  A thing, maybe a lump, maybe a bit of nerve that glows with the  dye injections, maybe a tumor or a cyst or just a knot of scar tissue there for the taking.

There is no looking back.  Every moment is do or die.  It may not seem like it at the time – it’s just another silly decision – except that isn’t how it works.  This decision leads to that decision leads to that situation leads to that choice…  Free will is exhilarating and devastating at exactly the same time.

I think a lot about the value of my life.  In a week they will be doing surgery on my back.  Destroying the nerves that cause pain  – the pain that is telling me that the bones in my back are decaying.  And I am on board.  But all the time I ask, is it worth this?  Is what I am doing now worth this?  Am I worth this?

The fact that I ask is distressing.  But I can’t – nay, I don’t  want to hide the truth.  Not any longer.

I want the unusual.  I’ve made it happen in so many aspects of my life.  Talk with me for an hour and you will know – we are off the map.  Here there be monsters.  But is that something to ask another to share?  Could I ever in good conscience ask someone to bear with me in this particular adventure.

The answer is no, in case you were curious.

So I go in for surgery next thursday.  I’m contemplating trying to go through it alone.  I asked friends if they were available to help.  They said yes, but then spoke about how troublesome their jobs and relationships and general life commitments are.  I could end up paralyzed.  And to me?  To me that would be better than asking one of my over extended friends to assist.

Once I asked myself what I would do if I ever got cancer.  Suicide was a very simple and elegant answer.  But what about chronic pain?  What about bankruptcy?  What about living the rest of your life alone?  Are those no reasons to reconsider my pledge?  Sure cancer is easy, if you give up.  But so is prolonged poverty.  So is long-term loneliness.

How much are you willing to give up seems to be the question I m asked every time I step our-slide.  Turns out, I’ll give up just about everything.if you will just not judge me.  My life has been hard.  Really hard.  and the fact that I am still going – the credit belongs to generations of survivalists.  I have not kept myself together.  I am scattered among the starts.  What you see is the ghost of me.  The lingering afte-image that slowly dies as the real thing fades into the distances of oblivian.

I’m supposed to give up.  i don’t know how.  I don’t know that i want to.  But at the same time…

Taking the high road doesn not make on better.  I just gives them a better view/

What is t hat view worth to me?  A father’s praise.  Such a simple thing, with such profound repercussions when it works out.

Tell your people today.  Tell them that you live them.  That they are what makes you life today possible.  That without them you would be a cold lonely sad person like me.

Make sure they don’t want to be like me.

Grudge Match

My boss is giving me the silent treatment.  This isn’t the first time – it isn’t even the second time, but this time, this time I’m not walking on eggshells and trying to work it out.  This time I half hope he tries to fire me.  I want this to finally come to a head so that we can all move on with our lives.

I stay at my job for the medical benefits.  I have some outstanding issues – things I will not be able to afford on my own.  And I can’t afford to wait.  But everything takes time.  Insurance approvals take extra time.

If it weren’t for that, for the lump in my wrist and the persistent dry rasping cough, and the infernal back pain (I have advanced osteo-arthritis in my lower back – I named it Arty), I would have already handed in my resignation.  My supervisors have tossed me under the bus so many times that I have permanent tire tracks etched in my back.  It wasn’t always this way.  I used to really like my job, to really like where I worked and who I worked with – I thought I was making a difference.

But that difference is like that eyedropper of ocean water – it means nothing in the grand scheme.  I help a few people, but so many more – oh so many people need help – far more help than is even remotely possible.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to walk away from a dire situation that I could do nothing to improve.  It used to break my heart.  Now it just makes me tired.

Even the wins feel like losses.  Every success seems to leave a heaving wake of insulted and unhappy co-workers or partners or development professionals or non-profits, or whoever else we are working with.  My boss does not build relationships, he operates through threats and stubbornness.  He gives ultimatums that leave our partners feeling forced and coerced.  He insults their intentions – most of which are good, if not downright noble.  He trusts no-one, not even me, and he makes that clear from the get-go, but gets upset when the other parties don’t trust him in return.  So we win one, and then I spend weeks and months rebuilding the relationships that I use to actually make things happen.

And I’m tired.  I’m tired of all of it.  I have anxiety induced chest pains every morning, and I spend my commute trying to decide whether or not I need to medicate to make it through the day.  I’m whining.  I know it.  But I’m also taking the brunt of the punishment.  I do my best to protect my coworkers, especially my reports.  Because that is how I believe a leader should act – they should set others up for success and do their best to keep the flow of progress moving – even if it means taking the shit.

It’s all going through the motions now.  Sometimes I’m so medicated that faking comes easy.  But most of the time I’m in so much pain that I can’t stand still, and I’m often on the verge of tears.  And all of the elasticity and resiliency in my personality is absorbed in not losing to the pain – there is nothing left for my boss and his mood swings.

Which is how we end up with the silent treatment.  I want to scream at him to grow up and get over himself, but I know that is not how it works.  He’s well past retirement age.  He’s still working because his home life is unpleasant, and because he likes the adrenaline of constantly working against deadlines, and because he likes the recognition and the accolades and the credit he gets for our accomplishments.  When I talk about him with coworkers I try my best to talk about his good points in equal contrast with his weaknesses.  I try not to ever bad-talk anyone at work.  But when I am away from there, I recognize that his unstable moods and his fits of anger have completely overwhelmed his skills and beneficial experience – to the point that nobody who knows him will work with him as their supervisor.

I’m trapped between my physical health and my mental health.  I’m sacrificing the latter for the former right now, and I know it.  It is risky, I’ve never been a paragon of mental health, but I don’t see a functional alternative.

It’s a grudge match.

In a Moment

The room is cold.  Every operating room is cold, but this room, while it has warm wood paneling and a mix of soft and bright LED lights, this room is especially cold for all of its attempts at warmth.  The anesthesiologist is holding my hands, and I wonder how her hands are so warm while mine are so terribly cold.  There is another nurse holding my feet, her hands resting gently just below my ankles.  Her hands are warm too.

I feel something cold entering the veins on the back of my right hand and I wait for the regular drowsy brain thickening to start.  I can hear the compressor click on for the oxygen that is tubed up my nose, and the air that floods my nostrils and throat is cold and a little metallic and just a bit sweet.  I try to take deep breaths, partly to calm myself, and partly because I know that a lot of oxygen in my bloodstream will help facilitate the anesthetic.

This is not my first surgery.

I’m still waiting for the anesthetic to hit and I’m starting to wonder why nobody is asking me to count down from ten (my record is four – I’m a boss at fighting anesthetic) and another nurse, not the one at my feet, is swabbing my bare lower back with a ridiculously cold sponge.  I’m pretty sure that warming the antibacterial soap they use to clean a site would not negatively impact its antibacterial qualities, but I’ve yet to find a surgical center that does.  I’ve been to five different surgical centers in the region in the last four years.  Sometimes for the same problem, sometimes something different.

It’s amazing how much can go wrong in our bodies.

My doctor/surgeon steps beside and starts probing my back with his gloved fingers.  The anesthesia still hasn’t kicked it, and I’m starting to get nervous.  Last time I was half gone when they started with the needles, and even though it hurt, it hurt as though through a fog, a dim and almost shapeless hurt, vague and sharp at the same time.  I was never more than half gone last time, but half gone was enough.  This time my brain is sharp and even as another hit of cold infuses the veins of my right hand, I am approaching the realization that there will be no real anesthesia this time.  I try to prepare myself because I intellectually know what is coming, and my reliance on some sort of anesthesia had prevented me from doing the kind of preparation I would have otherwise taken for something I suspected was going to hurt a great deal.

I’m too late though.

The first needle enters with a sharp stab in my lower back.  My muscles contract involuntarily and I let out a little cry.  The surgeon withdraws the needle with a sigh.

“You’re going to have to hold still” he says.  There is a little compassion in his voice – he knows how much I’ve been hurting these last several months, but at the same time, he knows I just wasted several minutes of valuable surgical time.  The radiologist has to re-adjust the x-ray to get the ganglion that my surgeon is hunting back on the screen.

I hold still as I can this time.  I know the needle is coming, and my left fist is full of bedsheet while I try to get control of my breathing.  I’ve had pain of one sort or another for over a decade.  Twice, no, thrice it was from car accidents that were not my fault.  Once from a motorcycle accident that was.  Then there was pain from all the fights – fight after fight – and all the training for fights, until my anger had run dry and my need to hurt myself had dissipated.  And there was the pain from testing my limits.  I have always tested my limits – how far and how long could I run, how many rounds in the ring could I stay conscious, how much weight could I lift, how quickly could I ascent the rock-face.  Long ago I realized that the limit we perceive and the limit we experience are vastly different.  The first kicks in way before we even get close to the second.  All of which is to say, I know how to handle pain.  I know how to hold still when it hurts.  I even know how to relax through it – to lean into the pain until it becomes something that I can control, like my breathing or, to a degree, my heart rate.

The needle goes in smoothly.  I don’t flinch and I feel the ganglion light on fire as the syringe delivers its payload of lidocaine.  My surgeon withdraws the needle, says something supportive and moves to the next site.  This time he hits the ganglion on the first attempt.  I don’t even twitch, even though I can feel every fiber and tissue scream as the needle pierces its way to the front edges of my spine.  Again the burning as the lidocaine hits the nerve, and the relieving sensation as the needle withdraws.  I think to myself, as long as I keep breathing and keep calm, I can do this.  I can stand this – I’ve had worse.  I’m secretly pleased that my heart-rate is only a few beats over my normal resting rate.  I’m in control.  I can do this.

I was wrong.

The needle begins its penetration to the next nerve and my whole body seizes in pain.  I can’t tell if I’ve screamed or not, but my heart rate has accelerated to a brisk jog, and the burning in my back persists even though I know my surgeon has removed the needle.

“The nerves are really irritated and sensitive in this region” he says.  NO SHIT, I think.  I’ve been in pain for over a year.  Sometimes it burns and aches so bad that I can’t stop the tears, that I can’t continue to stand, that I seriously consider the merits of suicide.  He’s trying to push a 5 inch hypodermic needle into the second most painful spot on my body.  The most painful is along the same vertebrae, but on the right side, and I have a brief moment of panic.

“You’re going to have to control the flinch reflex.” he says.  “Like you did on the other ones.”  I try to get control of my breathing as he starts probing around my spine again.  I’m almost ready when I feel the needle prick.  My back muscles flinch and he withdraws.  It takes a few moments to re-align the x-ray and I try to get control of my reflexes.  It takes me five or six more tries before I successfully resist the flinch reflex.  I’m super proud of myself as he starts the injection along the left side, starting with the less painful vertebrae.  This time I don’t even twitch when the needle enters.  I’m a pro – experienced at pain, and in full control of myself, my life, my choices, my world.

And then I am not.

He starts to slide the needle against the S1 vertebrae, and the hyper-inflamed nerves lead the muscles in a total mutiny of my hubristic “control”.  I flinch so hard that I can feel the needle tearing tissue in my back as the muscles drag it away from my spine.  The radiologist re-adjusts the x-ray and my surgeon tries again.  Again I seize.  Again I feel the tear.  He lectures me a bit, and through clenched teeth I say I’m trying.  But the pain – this is not a pain I can meditate through or breath through or relax through.  This is fight or flight.  This is the pain that trumps everything.  It is primal, and the flinch is hardwired into a part of my brain that I have no control over.

Again and again my surgeon attempts to get the needle into my back deep enough to hit the offending ganglion nerve.  Again and again I seize and tear the needle away from its target.  I’m starting to grow fatigued from the pain and strain when I feel the nerves in my right leg fire and my foot begins to thrash about.  Now I know why there was a nurse at my feet.

She pins my foot so quickly that I barely have a chance to hurt myself.  My surgeon withdraws the needle again.

“It hit my leg” I say through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, I thought so.” he says, and tries to slide the needle in again.  The nerves in my right hip and leg are still afire from the violation, and the muscles in my back are seizing so hard that I barely notice the cold rush into the veins of my right hand.  The oxygen tank compressor has been off for a while, and I wish it would click on, that something would happen that, for a moment, could take my mind off of what is happening.

I’m doing this for a job.

The thought hits me like a stone.  I’m doing this to my body so that I can continue to work a job in a cubicle – a job that has long since ceased to be satisfying, a job for a boss who has become mercurial on his good days, a job where all it feels like I do is fix other people’s mistakes – and make my own in the process.  I’m doing this for a job that is not what I’m meant to do – that is not my dream, that is not my goal, that is not my final destination.

And I realize that I am insane.

I’ve lost track of how many times the surgeon has tried to get the needle into place along that last vertebrae joint.  Twenty?  Maybe thirty?  More than thirty.  My entire list of adult life choices is passing before me – everything from my first job, to my failed marriage, to my undergrad, to my current position and I’m judging like the chief justice of the Supreme Court.  How many failures?  How many times have I tolerated situations that were really unhealthy for me?  How many times have I allowed people to mistreat me?  How many times will he need before he gets this needle in?  And what in my life is worth this kind of pain?

Not a hell of a lot – definitely not my job.  Probably not my house.  I’ve already given up my lifestyle.

I’d endure this for a friend.  For my immediate family.  For a lover (that I really don’t have) or for someone who has the potential to really make this world a better place.

And then it hits me.  Would I endure this pain for me?

Would I do this to improve my own life?  Would I tolerate this if I knew it would give me something beneficial in the end?  I’m terrified and disappointed that I never asked this question.  And year and change of doctor appointments and debilitating pain and all the different drugs in the world, and I’ve never actually confirmed that I am worth this.  I always thought I was doing it for the job, but the reality is that I should be doing it for me.

I feel the needle enter, and the muscles don’t seize.  It hurts so bad that I’m crying, my knuckles are white, and even my right hand is clenched so hard that the IV is protruding from the vein.  My surgeon keeps pressing and gets the needle as close as he can to the over-stimulated ganglion.  I feel the chemical burn of the lidocaine as it hits the nerve, and then nothing.

The nurses close my surgical gown over my back and set a warm blanket over my body.  They wheel the gurney into the room and I move myself from the table to the bed.  I lay my legs straight and it takes me a moment to realize that I can do so.  Normally I can’t.  But I hurt.  Oh how I hurt.

And this is only a test.  I get to decide if I pass or not, and the next grade… it makes this look like a cake walk.

I decided I passed, but I would be lying if I said I had no trepidation for the next stage.  And everywhere, in every sentence and every question and every email and meeting and conference call and document needing review there lingers this life changing decision.

Is it worth it?

I don’t know.  But I hope so.

Brave New World

It’s been a year since I put anything here.  A very eventful year.  I don’t know why I quit writing, but that maybe I was tired.  I’ve been tired a lot in the last few years.  Mostly tired, actually.  I’m tired now.  I just don’t know what all to do about it.

I’m not going to go into detail about what has happened over the last year but to say that I got promoted, started a relationship, lost the relationship, failed an interview for a new job, had some success with the work band, and got down to a reliable size 8.  Reliable.

The relationship was a huge learning experience.  I learned that if someone talks about the way they have treated other people in a way that makes you cringe, that is a warning – they are one bad experience away from talking to you the exact same way.  I learned that I do not have commitment issues – that when I am in, I am all in.  I learned that I can fall in love.  I learned that living in good faith means accepting responsibility for my actions – past and present – and all of the consequences even when it wasn’t my fault or choice or desire or intent.  I learned that being right does not exempt me from my oath to live in good faith.  Just because I didn’t ruin something doesn’t mean I get off scott free for being careless.

I was careless.  Or I think I was.  I’ve been trying to find out for sure, but I’ve had the hardest time of it.  I think the universe doesn’t want me to know.  But that is another story for another time.

I’ve forgiven myself for my role in the dissolution of this relationship.  I’ve forgiven him too – it wasn’t just one party’s fault.  I don’t know if I can be friends though.  I struggle with that part.  There are aspects to him that I would overlook as a lover but that I find difficult to tolerate as a friend.  Funny how that works.

I will be re-engaging with the rest of the world however.  I will not stay knocked down by this one.  I will get back on the metaphorical horse.  There is a little bit of work I need to do first though.

Last week I went to a week long continuing education session at a monastery in Santa Barbara.  It was intense.  Part of the curriculum involved regular journaling.  I haven’t journaled regularly in many years.  I’d forgotten how helpful it is in working through the nonsense stories I’ve created in my head.  Tonight I want to write a little about one of those stories.

One of the exercises in one of the sessions involved sitting across from another person – an acquaintance at best – and telling them what I deserve out of life.  To most people this would probably seem like an easy enough task.  They deserve to be loved and to have a happy life and to have a good job and a secure future and a family and a partner and all that jazz.  But for me this exercise was so difficult that I almost broke down.  I almost started crying in front of this veritable acquaintance – blubbering about how I don’t deserve anything.  Which is bullshit.  I know it is bullshit, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.

So I started trying to analyze why I feel this way about myself.  Why is it so difficult for me to believe that I deserve to have a good and happy life?  Why only me?  I easily accept and frequently remind my friends of all the good things they deserve, what makes me unique?  During the session we talked about the way we react to the “lessons” or “mores” passed on by family and friends, through music and TV and movies, in school, and through books.  I’m talking about the rules we create around our realities – where we decide, based on whatever feedback we’ve received, whether or not we are pretty or smart or clever or funny.  The rules that tell us what we can and can’t accomplish, what we are good at and what we fail at, and why we shouldn’t try.  These are internal rules that may or may not (usually not) have any basis in reality.  But we abide by them as though they are gospel.  So that when somebody says something that challenges those rules (“You’re really pretty!”) our response is to reject the challenging statement outright (“no I’m not”) and then deflect the speaker in order to avoid any other challenges to our reality.  I was thinking about my rules – the ones I’d inherited from the church and my family and my peer group.  I’ve already rejected all of the church oriented rules.  I’ve also written over most of my family inspired rules.  The one where my ideas never work?  Gone.  The one where I’m only pretty if I have long blonde hair that coil in neat ringlets?  Gone.  The one where I’m fat?  Gone.  The one where I’m lazy?  Eh, mostly gone.  Still working on that one.  As for my peer group, I don’t know that they ever had all that much influence over me.  I’ve spent most of my life abstaining from whatever celebration or social event or holiday that my peer group was focusing on for that week.  I’m used to being something of an outcast – which means that now, that I’m not really an outcast at all – it is easy for me to take the solo road.  Natural even.

This left me wondering where my rules come from.  What is it that has shaped my world so that I don’t feel like I deserve anything good in my life?  Then it occurred to me – the Shit.  All of the Shit that has happened to me – from my abusive marriage to my familial abandonment to my stalker to my car accidents to my rape to the death of my mentor – even the loss of my most recent relationship – all of that Shit that has happened to me with no real reason or direct cause.  I have had all of these fairly terrible things happen to me – many of them absolutely randomly, with no input or causation from me – that have had a very noticeable impact on my self image.  I joke all the time that with my mis-fortune I must have been Hitler’s Gardner in a previous life.  Even people who have a much more self-determined concept of life tend to agree.  It is almost comical the way that I attract bad mojo – even and especially when I am trying my hardest to be positive and strong.  So much of it rolls off my back (the mouse in the house, the furnace that caught on fire, the flooding in the garage – a small fraction of February’s adventures) that it isn’t until I start keeping track that the sheer weight of the Shit becomes apparent.

Generally speaking I don’t whine about the Shit.  I don’t call my friends and complain.  I don’t go asking for other people to handle my Shit for me.  I don’t blame anyone.  I just deal with it as best I can.  But I internalize it too.  I wonder what kind of person must I be to have so many bad things happen.  Just how terrible I am as a person to deserve all of this Shit.  Because I must deserve it, right?  That is what our parents and our religions and our schools and our friends teach us – that bad things happen to us as a result of us being bad – doing things wrong – treating others poorly – just not being a good person.  Therefore the mere existence of “the Shit” means that I must be a bad person.  And bad people don’t deserve to have good things in their lives.  Bad people don’t deserve anything but bad things.  This was my struggle.  I know I am not a bad person.  I work really hard to help people and do right by the environment and live my life in good faith.  I cannot both live in Good Faith and be a bad person.  But the Shit keeps happening.  So I reject the part where I know I am a good person and I accept the part where I deserve the Shit and round and round we go.

The thing is that I don’t deserve the Shit.  It just happens.  It will probably continue to happen.  And I still won’t deserve it.  The question is whether or not I can believe that I don’t deserve it.  If I can actually believe that I deserve good things.  Not know – knowing is easy.  Believe.  Believing is something far more difficult than knowing.

I think this warrants another trip to the therapist.  I’ve come so far in the last ten years – I like myself these days.  I feel like I have a lot of positive things happening for me, and I’m in a generally stable place emotionally.  Generally.  But I still don’t believe I deserve to be happy.  And that is a problem, because it isn’t going to happen until I believe it can.

I want to enter my next relationship with the belief that I deserve to be happy, that I deserve to not be lonely, that I deserve to be loved.  I think that was the piece that was missing for me this last time.  I hid it well, but that lack of faith in my own deserving-ness is what caused me to be careless – to (even if it was in my own mind) put another person at risk.

Another day I’ll write about the sameness of belief and reality – even if the belief is not reality.  Not tonight.  Tonight I want to think about finding a counselor.  And a dance class.  Time for this girl to find her groove.

A letter from the Hiatus

I haven’t posted here for a while.  There are a few different reasons.

1. I had to move.  My stalker situation got way out of control.  And for a chick that collects swords, knows 15 ways to kill a person without a weapon, and has a fully registered and legal gun, that is saying something.  I bought a new house – my own house with my own money.  And I love it.  I do still occasionally wake up not sure where I am.  I seldom think I’m back in the ghetto, but sometimes I remember a place that I’ve never actually lived in.  It is a little strange to wake up thinking that you’re looking out a bay window to realize that you’re actually looking at your bathroom mirror.  For reference, I’ve removed all of the doors in my house (with the exeception of the guest bathroom, because I don’t want to watch people use the restroom – ever).  I’ve also replaced about half of the flooring and repainted everything.  It has potential.  And it is built like a fortress.  You do not get to my front door unless I have given you express permission.  No surprises.  No unknowns.  Also?  Lots of solitude.

2. This is different from the solitude before in the old house in the ghetto (which I still think of fondly).  I was reduced to hiding in that house – between my neighbor constantly watching me and doing his stalking/threatening thing (he actually threatened to kill me at one point) and the rest of my neighbors always out on the street watching each other, it became very difficult to do anything without worrying what would happen while I was gone.  This solitude is healthier, though still not good for me.  As in, I no longer feel threatened, but it’s been over a week since I spoke to someone who wasn’t my mother.

3. I’ve had health issues.  I finally decided to get my nose fixed.  If you know me, then you know that I’m accident prone.  Ok, maybe not accident prone, but definitely injury prone.  Turns out all those times I suspected I’d broken my nose?  Yeah, I had.  The damage was so significant that they had to do surgery to correct it.  I get the splints out tomorrow.  Hopefully, if everything heals right, I’ll be able to breathe through my nose again, which I haven’t been able to do since some time in 2011.  I’ve also had to accept the fact that I will never run distance races again.  Three miles twice a week is the limit.  After that, I start hurting too much to do anything.  I hate the limitation – I remember those 10 and 12 mile runs with so much affection/appreciation – I’d give most anything to be able to do that again.  But it isn’t happening.  Not unless I want to go back into a cast – or worse, end up needing surgery on my foot.  I HATE limitations.

4. Work has been insane.  I work so much, so hard, that by the time I get home I can barely think.  My brain feels like mush most days.  And if I haven’t either worked out or drank until I was numb, I’ve played guitar and piano until I can’t think.  I wonder how long I can maintain a job that drains me this much.  It has gotten so much better – I only work a few hours overtime each week, and my assistant is contstantly learning and taking on new tasks, but I am still so behind.  I wonder how it got like this.  And I wonder if it is worth it.  As much as I like my workplace, and as much as I like parts of my job, there are things that I hate so much that I would willinging walk away on almost any given day.  The inefficiencies and the impracticalities of government work… I have a theory that is becoming increasingly supported by my daily experience.  Government can be either trasnparent or efficient.  It cannot be both.  Transparency is slow and very expensive.  Efficiency is quick, but by default opaque.  Yet government is expected to be both transparent and efficient.  It is an unrealistic – nien, an impossible expectation.  I’m just happy when I can help one person.  And most days, I can’t.

5. I’ve been really making a mess of my personal life.  The rules that I promised I’d never break?  Yeah, I’ve been bending those to the point of no return.  And the alternative – dating and relationships and all that – I’m actually ready – for the first time in a very long time, I’m ready.  I feel more emotionally stable and more sane than I’ve felt in a long time.  But I don’t know where to start with other people.  I really do not want to go back to the internet dating.  I’ve had no good experiences there to show me that it is worth it.  But I don’t know where else to go.  I work too much for social time at a physical location.  I workout too much for social time at the gym (I’ve been getting in 2 to 4 two per day workouts a week for a couple of months now, not counting surgery downtime – it is amazing, but it means that I’m at the gym when there is nobody else there).  And I don’t know where else to meet people.  The fact that it is starting to become a real issue means that I’m actually doing really well in my life.  I only worry about this sort of thing when I’ve got all my other basis covered.

6. This spring I will finally be graduating from my graduate program.  My thesis is a monster, and much of it is publishable.  I’ve had to eat quite a bit of crow and pay an exorbitant amount of money to get here.  I don’t know if it was worth it yet.  I just know it wasn’t easy.  Then again, for me, nothing is ever easy.

I owe a lot of people apologies for dropping off the radar.  I don’t know if I should apologize now, knowing that as soon as I am back at work (Friday) it is unlikely that I’ll be able to correspond again for a long time, or if I should wait until I have enough of my life under control that I can actually be a friend and correspond then.  I’m a horrible person.  If you didn’t already know that, know it now.  But even so, I know I owe people appologies for being the way that I am.  I cannot describe how difficult the last year and a half has been.  I won’t even try.  I will say that it means something to me that I’m no longer contemplating suicide on my daily commute.  I call that an improvement.

Any which way, I know I need to get back to myself – and a large part of that is writing here.  It will happen, eventually.  Slowly.  Gradually.  And probably after I fix my broken computer.  This is a pain in the ass on my laptop.  Just sayin…

And that is all for now.  I have pain pills calling.  They sound like cherry cough syrup.  Yeah, I’m not looking for sense.

Things That Happened

For someone who works as much as I do, an amazing number of absolutely abnormal things happen in my life.  Let’s review the last two months.  My neighbor went on a meth binge and threatened to kill my dog and rape me.  I got a restraining order.  I participated in a 5 hour black-belt test.  I had a five day migraine.  On the weekend of my birthday my neighbor decided to ignore the restraining order and parked his truck on my front lawn inches from my window.  He even ran over and broke a sprinkler.  So I bought a new house.  Then last Monday I almost lost the new house due to a error on the mortgage broker’s part. I saved the house (moving in 3 weeks or so) and got the loan finalized in a last ditch effort.  Wednesday evening I had surgery in my mouth to try and save a molar.  But Wednesday morning… Wednesday morning was horrible.  The most horrible of everything so far these last few months.

I was getting on the freeway to go to the gym, and there was a kitten in the onramp.  It was writhing and flipping back and forth, squirming the way that animals in their death throes do.  It’s head had been half crushed.  But it was still alive.  My instinct was to swerve – to try not to hit it because I don’t want to kill anything.  I even chase flies out of my house if I can.  But that kitten – it was dying a horrible painful terrifying death.  And it was happening slowly.  Who knows how long it had been in the roadway.  And who knows how long it was there after I passed by. 

I wish – even now – that I had run it over – that I had killed it and put it out of its misery.  I can’t get the image of its tiny body flopping on the asphalt out of my mind, and I hate the person who didn’t spay or neuter their cats so that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.  It is so useless. This kind of thing doesn’t have to happen.  And that it does is proof of how careless – and I mean that in the most literal form of the word – people are.  I hate them a bit for this cruelty.  Them being everyone.

And it reminds me of my time here in this neighborhood.  I really tried to live here in good faith.  But since my experiences with my neighbor, I don’t even go outside anymore.  I’m paying the guy next door to do my front yard.  The only time I go outside is to take my trash to the curb once or twice a month.  Otherwise I enter and leave from my garage.  I spend the whole weekend holed up in my house – not even going outside, eating whatever I can find in the cupboard.  I don’t go running.  I don’t go to the gym.  I already know that my neighbor is tracking when I come and go – he said as much.  And he jacked off on my porch – at least once. 

So I’m trapped – or at least I feel trapped – until I move.  I will do it better this time.  I will make it a whole lot harder to find me.  That I why I picked the house I did.  It is obscure.  And it will never be my mailing address.  And it has a big gate – my dog will be on the other side – between the street and the front door.  It is like a miniature fortress.  And I will fortify it with additional locks and motion sensors and new alarms and whatever else I need. 

I haven’t felt this vulnerable and this helpless in a very long time.  I’m not dealing with direct conflict.  I’m dealing with someone who watches from the shadows – as though I don’t know.  But I do know.  I know and I half wish it would just come to violence already – so that I can properly defend myself.  Because this passive-agressive bullshit is impossible.  But that isn’t how it will be. 

I think that part of the reason that the kitten on the onramp has so disturbed me is that a. I didn’t kill it when I had a chance.  I just didn’t realize what had happened soon enough and by the time I understood I was past it, and backing up wasn’t an option.  So I had to keep going and hope that someone would do what I hadn’t done.  I don’t even want to use the freeway onramp now because I do not want to see its corpse – and I know it will still be there.  It took them a week to remove the body of the dead dog on that same onramp – even though it was in the way and causing traffic to swerve when merging.  b. I feel that way in my life – as though something critical has been crushed out of me and the remainder is fighting for life even though it really isn’t possible – or even worth it.  My anxiety is at an all time high.  I have panic attacks in the middle of the night.  I go nights without sleep due to noisy neighbors – they have almost nightly sub-woofer competitions that leave me fantasizing about taking a crow-bar and seeing how much damage I can do before the cops come.  I’m thinking quite a lot.  And when the neighbors aren’t partying, the dogs are barking.  I haven’t slept more than 3 hours without waking up in months.  None of this means anything.  I am depressed in a way that I know to be truly dangerous.  Most of the time when I am depressed I still try to spend time with other people.  That is the balance – the time I spend with others helps heal whatever it is that is broken in my own brain.  But times like this – when the anxiety is so high that I can’t even go to my gym or to see my friends – that is when things get scary.

I turned 36 this year.  I used to joke about spending the rest of my life alone.  I don’t joke anymore.  It is happening.  One year at a time I pass my life alone.  At some point it is going to cease to be worth it.  Even the “crushes” are gone now.  I haven’t seen the guy at the gym in weeks – and last time I did he was surrounded by pretty young girls.  And the guy at work… beyond the awkwardness, I think he might be seriously involved with someone else.  It is a sense I’ve had for a while, but one that I tried to ignore.  I can’t ignore it any more.  It is what it is.

And for good reason.  Tonight I sit here writing this pathetic drivel – my face is swollen from surgery, my eyes rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep, and the rest of me showing my age at a far faster pace than seems reasonable.  The grey in my hair is obvious now.  And the skin on my skull seems to just sag.  I feel so worn out.  So exhausted.  Such a waste of life.  This depression has lasted for a very long time.  Usually it breaks up after a few months.  But this has lasted almost two years.  For almost two years I’ve been imagining how relieving it would be to be done here.  And every time I start to get better – like this spring – I get a nice little present to remind me of just how ruined my life is. 

I did it to myself.  Ok, maybe I didn’t do the stalking myself, but I didn’t handle it right from the start.  And I still am not handling it right.  I’m running away.  Or at least I’m trying to.  I’m going to a place where I can hide even more than I am now.  Where I can disappear completely. 

I wish I’d killed the kitten on the freeway onramp.  I wish I could have ended its suffering quickly and without fear or trauma.  I wish I had been thinking fast enough to know what was happening.  I wish I had made the right decisions at the right time.  I wish…

And then I give up.

Remembrance

Today I feel strong.  Not fat.  Not slow.  Not awkward.  Not clumsy.  Strong.  It’s been a very long time since I felt this kind of strength.  Years maybe.  Since my last half-marathon.  Which was in March of 2010.  I’d forgotten how it felt to be at ease in my own skin.  I’ve been fighting one injury or another for almost five years now.  There have been little pockets of wellness – but I took up running because my wrist was too damaged to fight – and eventually to climb.  I took up biking because my feet and ankles were too damaged to run.  And in-between I’ve lost teeth, gained weight, acquired an allergy to my life… And I’ve given up a lot.  Most of the things I’ve given up were ideas of myself – a concept of myself rocking a bikini, the impression of myself as a quality athlete, the idea that I am something special.  I am, and I’m not.  And who the hell cares if I can rock a bikini?

Anyway, today was someone else’s black belt test.  I never went through the traditional black belt test.  When my teacher died back in 2007, I was a couple months away from my test.  I knew what I was supposed to know.  I had a lot of sparring time under my belt.  I was just about ready.  That was then.  Now I realize that I have forgotten most of my techniques.  I remember the Kata only because I loved the Kata.  And it’s been years since I sparred – really sparred – anyone.  I often wonder if I deserve my rank.  If I was as sharp as I was back then… maybe.  Now?  I don’t know.  But today I was the practice dummy for someone else.  And it was interesting to both recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each technique – including the ones I didn’t know – and to allow myself to succumb to those techniques anyway.  Many of them are great techniques that would work well in any alley.  Many more of them were created in a dojo and would get the practitioner killed in the real world.  This is not an unknown thing.  But it is often unspoken.  I am ok with not knowing 100 techniques that do not work.  But that isn’t why I feel strong.

I was the designated sparring partner for this test.  And for the first time in a very long time – perhaps because of the amount of time I’ve spent on the heavy bag lately – I felt in the groove.  He got the better of me in a couple of clashes.  I got the better of him in a couple more.  It was very close.  Very.  And if we had been going full strength, it probably would have been different.  For both of us.  But as it was, we both had a chance to draw on the training we’ve received.  And the well I tapped was deep.  Far deeper than I remember it being.  I had moves I never remembered using in my previous matches.  I had a presence of mind that I barely remember even in my best of matches.  I could feel my breathing, it was actually the most challenging part, and I could feel how it changed my energy and how when I calmed it, just a little, how my reflexes sped up and my vision sharpened and my movements became more defined.

The adrenaline was pumping very hard.  For about 8 minutes probably – shorter than I expected – my adrenaline was doing a steady drip into my system, keeping me literally on my toes.  I’d planned for this to be at least 15 minutes.  I’d trained for it to be 15 minutes.  I’m so glad it wasn’t 15 minutes.  My heart would have exploded.  And my heart normally beats at 58 beats per minute.  It is not a flabby heart.  But the extra time was unnecessary.  Because of the quality.  The quality of this match was amazing.

I grin when I get a good hit – sending or receiving.  A solid move that has good targeting and excellent execution will get a smile out of me – even if it is me getting hit.  I don’t remember when this started happening – when I started to grin during a fight.  People tell me it is intimidating – that to face off on someone who is grinning madly at them in a fight is unnerving.  The grin, it means I am in the moment.  It means that I am nowhere else but there – focused and alive and completely present.  It happens without me even thinking about it.  It means I am serious.

I was very serious in this match.

I needed this.  Last week I went and filed for the restraining order against my neighbor.  It was humiliating.  Dehumanizing.  And misogynistic.  I got the order – when he admitted to beating on my door while high on meth, oh and he had the hospital blood tests to prove it, the judge stopped asking questions and started signing.  Still, is that what I need to protect me?  A piece of paper that says “stay away or else”?  Because I know I can do better with that.  I know I have the strength and the ability to hurt someone – to damage people who threaten me.  I know that I wanted to get the order to protect him – to give him concrete reasons to stay away from me.  And to protect me if ever I did need to physically defend myself.  But the process…

The process left me sick.  As though I would vomit – for almost two days.  I had to submit to a kind of humiliation that I do not think any judge or founding father or civil rights lawyer could understand – not unless they were female and forced to describe in detail the kind of sexual harassment I experienced to a bunch of complete strangers while the sexual harasser stood there next to you and called you a liar.  Because that is what happened.  And I allowed it.

I felt violated – all over again.
I also felt relieved once the order was received.  But humiliating myself to get something I want is not my modus operandi.  I have walked away from much more over much less.

Why should I have to submit myself to a completely different set of rules just because I don’t have a goddamn cock?  Why should I have to allow myself to be publicly denigrated for protection?  Males don’t generally have that problem.

And I know that I could physically take care of myself.  I knew it wasn’t necessary.  I knew that if I needed to, I could hurt him.  And I did it anyway.

I needed this test.  It wasn’t my test.  But I was still being evaluated for my ability and my strength.  My skills were still on display.

And they were satisfactory.

I. Am. Not. A. Victim.

I am not.  I need to remember that, because sometimes it gets difficult.  I feel like so much is happening out of my control and I am just along for the ride.  And that is true.  But that does not make me a victim.  It makes me human.

I am going to start working toward feeling strong more often.  This is healthy.  This is right.  This is good.  And I need good.  I want good.  I deserve good.

And that is something else I need to remember.