Thursday, September 22, 2011

One example of my bad attitude

A very bad stupid day yesterday, which maybe meant I hit bottom and turned the corner from the depression.  This morning coming in here w my coffee I noticed some faint negative thoughts, I mean the pissy thoughts about people whose crap makes my life even harder, but I noticed the thoughts, so there was a witness looking at my poor overloaded mind.  I wrote a poem this morning.  I meditated for the first time since we got back, briefly, knowing I had to do these things before the pain got bad and I took the first oxycontin, because on opiates you just don't care.

(I guess that's partly how they ruin lives. That, and the fact that they're illegal unless prescribed; and I suppose it is illegal to prescribe them just because someone likes the way they make you float and appreciate beauty.  It is a stupid law that has resulted in our prisons being crammed with mostly black young men who did nothing violent, just sold drugs.)

This has all involved how hard I worked these last years to stay alive, how vigilant I was, had to be.  Then what, you're walking toward the bathroom to fill your water pitcher because you have to drink 3 liters of water a day, you trip over nothing and down you go, flat, and a broken arm that is going to make every minute of your life a hassle for six weeks.  One second of inattention.

It was a second during which I was thinking how unresponsive and useless dokusan had been that morning, how I wasn't going to do another one, how I just had one *&%$# day to get through, then we could go home, thinking I probably would never come back on this retreat.  Yes, I had things on my mind.  But I don't care what you do, you can not guarantee you won't fall.  Could have struck my temple on the doorframe and been a functional vegetable the rest of my life.

It hurt, and it shocked me the way a fall can, and let loose all the misery and anxiety of these last years trying not to die.  And now what?  Almost a year after transplant and it's been a lousy, difficult year, not worth living.  I will never have another transplant, or go on dialysis again.  Done with extraordinary measures.

In all this depression there was something I decided about letting go my anxious vigilance.  I don't mind dying, people - in fact, at this point I'd welcome it.  God, gets me out of here.  I will do what I know I have to do to (maybe) keep living, take the damn drugs 7 times a day, get labs done, drink the *&%$# water.  But I'm done dragging myself through things that supposedly will protect me.  I enjoy food.  I will eat what I like.  I find exercise boring, so today while Tom did his I walked around McConnell with my camera.  Watching every *&%$# step, believe it.  Enjoyed it.  Well, there you are.  An update. Where I'm calling from.
~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. It's been 12 weeks now, and the arm is still a problem, not even ready for PT to get range of motion back (Wun hopes).
 

No comments:

Post a Comment