Am at that wonderful time of the hayfever season (very different here) where my existing wisdom teeth hurt like hell and my phantom wisdom teeth are suggesting that they, too, are in pain. But as the Dr (as in the boyfriend, and not my physician) says, when am I not in some form of pain? I can answer that: there\’s no pain when lost in reverie. I spend so much time under self-hypnosis because it works, and unlike the codeine, et al, there\’s no physical addiction. Supposedly.
Other than my allergist and dentist, I haven\’t seen a doctor in months. I\’m kinda really not supposed to do that. I\’m kinda really not sure why I haven\’t when it is all covered by my health insurance here, whereas in the States, everything was a bank-breaking battle. One of my main hypotheses is that I\’ve just given the fuck up. There currently is no cure. There currently is no proven treatment or constant regimin. There is no steady course, there is no way to plan for three months from now or three years from now. I spent two and a half years just trying to fight the health care system and fight my body and it got me nowhere. After my own doctor nearly killed me by giving me the wrong dosage of medication (in his office, mind you), and I finished dealing with the health insurance fall out from that (finished is the wrong word; walked away from is more appropriate), I just gave up. Then I came here.
Personally, I find it absolutely hysterical that giving up on myself has made me so damn happy. Despite the situational ups and downs, my overall outlook for the past fouth months or so has been really wonderful. I like life. I like myself. I look forward to the future. And I no longer have any hope of getting my body better. I gave up on that bit. I\’m now looking forward to the day when I can download my brain into a sensitive AI unit, or have my spinal column and cord entirely replaced. Something sci-fi; a transhuman cure that I don\’t think will actually happen in my lifetime, so it seems a hell of a lot safer occasionally bitterly wishing for such things than wishfully wishing for a cure for my atrophying brain. The impossible hurts less than the improbable. There\’s no point in waiting or aiming for the impossible, whereas the improbable could come tomorrow or next year.
In some respects I feel like I have committed a form of emotional suicide. I\’ve let go of a supposedly vital form of optimism and have embraced the pessimistic, cynical, and nihlistic side of life. (Enter bad jokes about the Dark Side here.) Being the overly self-aware arse monkey that I am, I know that all I have managed to do in the past few months is to finally reach the last stage of the grieving process: moving on; the \”Integration and Growth\” stage. Clinical psychobabble; I really get annoyed when it is right.
If I think about it, which I haven\’t in weeks until tonight, I feel sort of sad and lonely when I realize I\’ve let go, and what I have let go of was myself. Now I\’m gone, and there\’s this other me here, this me that I barely know and am a bit wary around still. The me that no longer fears life in a wheelchair or losing my mind, and has actually set a goal to try my gimpy hands at wheelchair basketball while being in a wheelchair is optional. I\’d like to pay the DSA a visit and have my first attempt at surfing be under the watchful eyes of people familiar with sudden onset neuropathy. Sure, I\’ll spend the following week in bed, unable to move much further than the toilet, but goddammit, I will have used my body, and it won\’t have used me. I guess that\’s really what it\’s all about. I am in control. I\’ll be a gimp for the rest of my life, but I am in control, and not my (dis)abilities. It just means that my control is incredibly fucking limited unless I want to face the consequences of pushing my very restricted limits.
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Both the sprog and Dr fell asleep before 11:30 tonight, thereby leaving me with the first quiet night hours I have had on my own in almost two months. It\’s a real treat, but I can barely keep my eyes open to enjoy it. Every moment that I\’m awake, I know I should be working on my last paper for this semester, or my most recent site contract, or answering months worth of e-mail… but instead, the very guilty indulgence of very self-indulgent journaling. Sylvia Plath, eat your heart out. [Editor\’s note: I realized last month that if I am going to continue to speak rudely of Plath, I ought to at least manage to finish some of her work, but I just can\’t. I\’ve never actually read The Bell Jar, her diaries or letters, nor any of her plays. My opinion is based solely on the impact she has had upon many young women, and my gut reaction to that is to violently puke. Having been a teenage girl fairly recently, and now playing mother-lite to a teenage girl, I desperately wish that teenage girls would manage to latch upon more positive role models than affected, self-abusing, egoistical neurotics; but that\’s like wishing for the sun to rise in the west.]
