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.
SecondHand Saint 