Birthday Thoughts

 So here is my private journal this morning, lightly censored.

damn - the pleasure of a new page
nice to sit here and people are wishing me happy birthday on facebook
woke up from my nap ystrda w this quiet groundedness - sanity

ystrda after church was into expressing my outrage at the whole damn thing, the year, the years before, what i have been through in the belief that a transplant would give me a life.  It was a good thing Wossname didn’t say “It’s all good” like she likes to mindlessly in her pursuit of a spiritual attitude or of being good or forcing happiness.

last night my feet and legs swollen awfully - need to find my compression sox see if we can get them on.  take it easy on salt today. 

so this morning, there’s the mindless optimism online.  it is a salve people put on.  why shd it anger me?  here you are in a f------ garbage heap.  maybe the sun is out, sun on your head and back is the greatest blessing.  maybe there’s some shiny thing you can pick.  but that’s not how they want to see it - they want to transform the world into a storybook cottage w picket fence and pink roses and white curtains and the sun coming thru and a decorous cat on the windowsill, and everything’s all right.  And pain, loss, illness, death are just oh, a nuisance you don’t have to pay attention to. 

No, life is hard.  The point is, get with the reality, but do not stick to your suffering either.  Handle the reality as well as you can.  But you don’t handle it if you refuse to see it.

i had a lot of outrage to express ystrda and i did.  found myself after church surrounded by the women I like most in the world, Liz, Gini, Terry, Pat, Laurie, we called ourselves the Crazy Artists - we are the ones who don’t go to meetings of artists.  they weren’t flinching from my bad language and anger about my f------ year.  Maybe they like someone saying how it is.

In sum, this has been a very hard year, if you want to know, go back and read this blog.  and the years before, trying dialysis, trying to get on the f------ transplant list, jumping thru flaming hoops to do it, then waiting, trying so hard to hold on to the little k function i had, why?  why did I want so goddamn bad to stay alive?  i don't know.  maybe it is a conditioned desire.  it's a stupid one after a point, and i'm over it.  I'm old, 69 today.  I am going to die.  I am no longer going to do excessive treatments or focus my life around not dying.  Not aging? that's a crock.

Coffee good this morning.  Might have t take me to Kohl's buy some comfortable underpants and maybe a treat, a wide-neck shirt i can get in and out of with this broken arm.  Have a good day, Reader, if you can, or some good moments.

[image: accidental calligraphy on a curb - if you know what it says, let me know]