Moxie

I’ve been very off this weekend.  (‘ve done almost nothing that I intended this weekend because of the pain.  What I did manage to do was fold up some used paper shopping bags ready to be put out in the recycling bin.  I also put a few other recyclables in a garbage bag ready to go out.  I can drop them in the bin on the way out tomorrow morning.

Someone was very nice and brought my recycling in bin for me on Friday.  I had put it out at about 4am on Friday morning and was ready to bring it in myself when I came home, only to find someone had taken care of it for me.  That was very nice of them.  I’ve really been struggling a bit lately and to have that little bit of help really makes a difference.  I guess until you’re in this kind of situation, you can’t really appreciate how massive those little acts of kindness are.

Right now, I’m still waiting for the pain killers to kick in and then I need to think about bed.  I’ve got a huge amount on tomorrow.  Over 30 services still to close, over 40 internals to prep, not to mention the 50+ emails I still need to get through which weren’t urgent. I barely know where to begin.  All it took was one day when we got swamped with callouts and the guys did their paperwork and wham, it was all over red rover and I drowned.  Guru is back this week.  Let’s see how we go with the extra pair of hands to help.  If she can do the internals, I can keep on top of callouts and get the services cleared out.  It’s just going to take time and diligence.  Either that, or a really stiff drink.

I just wish this pain in my breast wasn’t so bad.  It’s incredibly sharp and painful and absolutely non-stop.  I have looked up the symptoms of breast cancer and I don’t think it’s that.  None of them fit although a I sense a mammogram or ultrasound somewhere in my near future. 

It probably wouldn’t hurt to get screened anyway.  I’m of an age when it’s appropriate.  I just don’t think I could handle one more foul diagnosis though.  I’ve been through enough.  I need a break.  These last few years I just keep copping it.

First there were cataracts that’s taken almost 7 years to be operated on with one down and another still to go.

Agony in my legs and back that took over 2 years to be addressed.  It’s been literally 24/7 since March 23 and I cannot tell how fed up I am with living on 2-3 hours of broken sleep each night, let alone being repeatedly woken screaming in pain because the pain killers are only partially helpful even though they’re the ones you have to go through Pain Team to get.

Pain in my left abdomen which began after I injected my insulin one day late last year and hasn’t stopped stabbing me since.  Even the slightest of moves can set it off.   I can’t help feeling that maybe the tip of the needle broke off in there or something. I don’t know how else to account for it.  And I don’t know how to fix it.

Then we had the fall where I imploded on myself and bruised multiple organs.  That’s only just now starting to settle.  I’m still short of breath through which is a symptom of a bruised kidney.

Then I found the lump in my right armpit which went away with the antibiotics but right after it did, this pain began in my right breast and tissue under my right arm.

I’m OVER being in pain.  I’m OVER foul diagnosis.  I’m OVER being unable to DO stuff because I never feel up to it.  I want my friggin LIFE back.  NOW.

I’ve literally done years of top shelf pain and suffering.  Why isn’t that enough to have learned whatever it is I’m supposed to learn so this just moves on?  I feel weak, disempowered and unwell all the time.  What IS it I’m supposed to be seeing that I’ve not yet?

For crying out loud, I’m one of the most introspective deep thinkers I know.  I’ve pondered and analysed all these events til the freaking cows come home. 

I believe things happen for a reason and usually it’s some kind of lesson we have to learn.  If there’s one in any of these events, it’s totally lost on me. 

And guess what?  I’m over THAT, too.

You want icing on that cake?  The friend I’ve turned to time and again over almost 20 years has blown me off and ghosted me because he’s shacked up with a married woman who claims to have cancer and be waiting for a kidney transplant despite all the evidence (and so much of it) points to that story being nothing but a giant sham.  She SAID she’d leave her husband but anyone who possesses even one single brain cell (no matter badly damaged it may be) can see through THAT crappy line designed to do nothing more than tell the fling what he wants to hear.

I guess some guys will do anything for a woman who has so many morals and is such a fine, upstanding woman that she will happily cheat on her husband at the drop of a hat.

In this friend’s case, I’m betting that having a bimbo who will happily spread her legs for him is worth blowing friends who have had his back for so long, not forgetting how many times I helped him out financially even though I was living below the poverty line myself.  I think I might be better off without a friend like that in my life.  Who needs to be so viciously stabbed in the back by someone who does nothing but gaslight you incessantly.?  THAT lesson I learned quite well and honestly, I don’t miss him.

Months after he decided to teach me a lesson and ghost me, I applied for (and got) a job and have been doing fine ever since – even with the medical issues.  Losing him from my life allowed me to move on in other ways which has been all positive in that respect.

Did I mention that he gave up a paying job to move into the cheating bimbo’s house that was apparently her fathers and was left to her when he died?  So now he’s living in this house rent free on the basis that he’ll “fix it up” so it can be sold.  Even a total moron can hear what a lie that line is. 

Effectively, she has him living in her property which is around the corner from where she lives with her husband and he has no lease and thus, no rights.  She can decide the fling is over and change the locks and he’s stuffed.  He won’t have a leg to stand on because effectively he’s living there at her graces and can be tossed out any time she decides.  How much of a dickhead is he then?  But it’s convenient for her to have her bit on the side so handy whenever she wants a roll in the hay.

And he prefers THAT situation to the friendship he was given by myself and others (whom he has also ghosted) because he’s so desperate to get laid.  I think he’ll learn his lesson eventually but this time, it’s going to be a total walk through the fires of hell and he’ll have very few people to help him through it.  That’s kind of what happens when you burn your bridges beyond ashes.  There is no going back.

I’m going to have to figure out a way to get past all this medical stuff so I can get back into things I enjoy.  Reading for one.  Embroidery for another (cataracts really get in the way with that).  Photography.  Long walks around the lake in the nearby park.  Maybe even going to the mountains for some hiking of the trails and enjoying the wonderful energy up there.  Then there are gorgeous tea shops to enjoy, beaches to walk while the sea spray ruffles my hair, galleries to enjoy, and functions on all over the city an I know I’d enjoy.  I might even get back to Hanging Rock and do the summit again.  That would be spectacular.

Oh yeah, I have a pile of things I’d like to get back into and that I firmly where my gaze is fixed.  Thie whole pain thing has whiskers on it.  It’s past time to move on from that crap and pick up the life I’ve had to put on hold.

I said from the time this pain first began setting in, this is my now, not my forever   And damned if I’m going to sit down and just give up.  I’m a Taurean.  We fight out way through.  Curling up in a corner and having a pity party is NOT our style.  And it’s not about to become mine – ever.

It’s time I put on my moxie and kicked this shitty crap to the kerb.  I deserve better but it’ll be up to me to make it happen.  And I can do that.

Just watch me.

Mother and Self

I have been brought to mind of a book I bought when I was in my early 20’s.  My Mother, My Self, by Nancy Friday. If you the cover blurb, it’s about a daughters struggle for identity.  

When bought it, it was appropriate.  I was at time in my life where I starting to break the cast iron grip my mother had on me physically, emotionally and psychologically.  I was young in the journey but having come across the book, I thought it might help me with pearls of wisdom, it not outright offering me signposts I could follow to lead me down the path.

Largely, I was trying to separate myself from her.  Trust m, figuring out what was her stuff and what was mine was an absolutely gargantuan task which has taken decades of really hard, and often painful, work.

Did the book help?  I have no idea.  I have tried to read the book on multiple occasions but always with the same result.  I will sit and read a chapter or two and have absolutely NO idea what I just read.  And I mean, NO idea.

It’s like I check out completely while I try to read the book.  I cannot tell you what was on the page nor what I took from it.  For that time, it’s like I simply ceased to exist. 

I can only conclude that whatever I read was too confronting for me thus I couldn’t allow myself to internalized it consciously.  I AM confident, however, that some part of me took in the content on those pages and did something with it.  Whatever part of me is aware and interacts with the world simply checked out for the duration of the ride.  And perhaps that’s for the best.

If the content is so confronting and perhaps way too close to home, then it makes sense that I had to hide from that knowledge no matter how much I desired it.

What a good thing not all learning is done on the surface level.  I’m certain I did a massive amount of processing and growth via my subconscious and in a way that wouldn’t destroy me psychologically.  How extraordinary that my brain and psyche gave me exactly the safety net I needed in order to read and learn without being at risk.

I still have the book and occasionally I come across it.  Every time it turns up, I have another bash at it, but each time with the same result.  This is the only book I’ve ever reacted to in this manner.  I find it somewhere between frustrating and outright irritating.

On the other hand, over the decades, my feelings about my mother have changed dramatically.  She hasn’t hanged.  I have.

It’s not easy to see a parental figure as being entirely separate from yourself.  How do you not drag up all the baggage whenever they spring to mind.  For me, when I think of my mother, I am instantly brought to mind of the cruelty, the iron clench she had on my life, the endless criticism to the effect I could never do anything right, and the way she claimed whatever successes I had as her own, outright telling me that I could only do those things because I was HER daughter.  And I was left in no doubt that I wasn’t a person, I was property.

When I try to see her a person in her own right, it’s a struggle.  All those memories come rushing back and I could simply drown under the weight of them.  It’s difficult to see her as a woman with her own dreams and aspirations, goals she worked towards, things tha worked out and other the left her bitterly disappointed.  I am able to see those things more clearly about a stranger in the supermarket queue than I am able to see them about her.  Does familiarity really negate our ability to see our parents as separate individuals?  I think there must be a point where we can release the baggage and meet our parents on even footage but I’m damned if I know where that place is.

Of course, a good starting point is to look at all the baggage.  What happened.  Why?  Which stuff do we ourselves have ownership of and which parts do we not.  It’s not a quick process.  Trust me.  I’ve been putting in the hard yards on this one for over 30 years and it’s still my constant companion.  I draw strength from knowing that learning come from many directions and most, we’ll never see until they smack us in the face and leave us reeling.

My mother IS me and I am her.  And we’re totally dissimilar in so many ways.  I suspect we need plenty of space in order to be able to find the common ground if here is any.  Then one has to decide if that ground is worth the ongoing struggle to hold it.  The cost may be too high or the prize not worth the effort.

When the time is right, I’m sure that book will appear again and I’ll have one more bash at it.  I might start with a later chapter though since I’ve already processed the first 3 on some level.  

Not all learning is clear and obvious.  Some of it is enters our psyche with all the skill and velvet feet of a ninja.  I still think there is some wisdom on the book which would be helpful to me, I just need to break down the barrier to embrace it.  I am keen to know what door I’ll unlock and who I’ll be after I’ve flung the doors wide and stepped through.

I don’t begin any moment the same as I was when I left the previous one.  Grown is inevitable.  It’s Brownian.  There is simply no way to arrest it.  But learning doesn’t have to hurt.  We can have gentle options which allow us to embrace the know without the past being bitterly torn from us. 

I’m in for the long haul.  I always have been.  I always will be.  And one day, I WILL finish that book, and remember the contents within. Just maybe, not today.