The following is a reply to my friend Shannon, who writes every once in a while from the faraway land of Colorado. Shannon is a very interesting lass, and although we have never met in person I enjoy her virtual company and we have exchanged a lot of friendship over the stress of being crippled folks in modern times. We always leave little questions at the end of our e-mails, for the other person to respond to (which is a technique for good conversation in real life, that sadly, most people lack). Here where her three from our last conversation;
1. What have you been up to lately?
2. Have you done any more stress drawings?
3. Do you like carrot cake?
***
Carrot Cake is a'ight. I hear it is good soaked in milk, but I have never tried it that way. I'm mostly a big fan of chocolately things, and despise lemon-flavored gunks. That's where my tastes lie on the sugary-candies scale. The lemon thing has led to some harsh disagreement with friends before. Give me a big block of German chocolate from the Black Forest any day.
I am ironically almost too stressed to do any stress drawings right now. I may try one a little later tonight, if I can stay awake long enough. I might put it in my blog. I'm just going to start cramming everything I write/draw into my blog, regardless of content. I'll put some old stuff in there too, if I can calm down enough to edit anything.
Do you have any requests?
As for what I've been up to lately, mostly this week I've been; sleeping, crying, pacing in circles, having moments of still calm where I'm staring at the wall in deep thought, or attempting to blog (but mostly deleting it after the paragraphs turn into unreadable gibberish). Some of my gibberish is below.
All of my close friends are giving me weird looks lately, but other than that they are going about their business and politely ignoring the fact that I'm leaking rage all over the floor. I suspect this is because they have a hard time imagining me this being angry, as most peoples memories of me consist of phrases like 'fun-loving guy', 'funny pervert', or 'lovable loon'. I think most of the people around me don't exactly understand whats happening to me right now, and I don't blame them, because it's pretty complicated and I'm not acting the way they expect me to. It's pretty hard to boil down 16 years of fuck-ups coming to a head in one month, to a wit-filled twitter post in 140 words or less.
I expect to be dead within a few months. I've always known my lifespan won't be as long as the people around me, but the particular way I'm going out is one of the reasons I'm so angry. My kidney is coming loose. I didn't even know a kidney could come loose, until the medical records and a RN friend of mine informed me of this. I figured it was merged in there by now or something, but apparently it can still reject. I'm sure the stress of my SSA cases are helping matters wonderfully towards that as well. The SSA sent me to a chiropractor the other day for my physical exam. A chiropractor. Didn't take any x-rays (you know, to see the gaping holes in my old kidneys), or have me on a treadmill (which would make sense, when I've complained about fatigue and never having energy to get through a whole day), or a sleep study (because I've complained of nightmares), or even draw blood. No, they sent me to a chiropractor, which has fuck-all to do with anything I've actually listed as a consequence of my disease. And I'm sure that the lady in the SSA desk married to her middle class husband who reads the chiropractor reports will be quite pleased to see that there's 'nothing wrong with me', and that they can save more money now that I'm a regular member of society. More hoops. Keep throwing hoops at that guy until he gives up or dies.
Its increasingly harder for me to relate to anyone around me on an emotional level because of this. Everyone keeps offering emotional support and sympathy, but nobody besides Jaime is trying to give me an actual solution to any of these things, or way to fix my life. That's really what I want more than anything else in the world right now, and nobody can give it to me. "Yes, I know you love me very much. Yes, I know I can come talk to you if I need a shoulder. Can you fix this? I need this fixed somehow. Any ideas? Any solutions at all? None? FUCK." I'd give up everything I've ever had if someone could fix this. Jaime herself is going to crack eventually, she has to. Nobody can take this much abuse, if its not for their children or their spouse.
Yesterday after I woke up from another fevered dream, I climbed onto facebook to see if I had any messages, ignoring the feeds (which depress me greatly these days). I happened across some pictures of a high school friend named Shauna, and her daughter. They are absolutely gorgeous pictures, showing a lot of love between them, making funny faces at the camera with each other in a small album. After a few seconds, I started crying. I started crying because Shauna didn't look like herself from previous pictures. Shauna in previous pictures looked very much like I remember her, a girlish punk-rocker chic that was largely unchanged by time from high school. In these recent pictures, she had not lost a single bit of her beauty, but she looked very different from those punkish pics that reminded me of our times in Grayson County. She looked like a mother. She looked like a woman. Shauna grew up, and she and her daughter are very happy.
And here I am, 16 years later and not a damn thing to show for it. For 16 years, I thought, "Oh, this whole mess will get fixed eventually; and I'll have my wife, and my cozy little house, and a job that I prolly hate (but it pays the bills), and at night before sleep I'll come home and work on my little nerd fantasies that I'll tell everyone will make me rich and famous someday but never will. But I'll be satisfied because that's better than what I had." That's my fantasy. That's a dull and dreary reality that so many people have around me, and I'm not even going to make it that far. Even if they don't have all the pieces, they got at least one or two of them. Everyone around me keeps making noise about how they're loney and can't get laid, or about how liberal/conservative politicians anger them, or whatever the fuck they're babbling about that day, and I seethe in quiet jealously because they at least have a stability that I've never had. I know you don't have much stability, either, but at least you got Nic. I got left by both women I wanted to marry, both because being the wife of a financially-draining cripple did not appeal to them. Can't say I blame them.
I want this fixed. This is not ever getting fixed. This is as good as it gets, and will only slide into getting worse until it ends. I was hit with that reality a month and a half ago. I'm just wasting time until that happens. When I close my eyes I see inside my flesh where the kidney is and imagine the connecting tube between it and my ureter, slowly unraveling like a rope on a rickety bridge across a chasm in an Indiana Jones movie. Tick tock, tick tock.
My Questions Three;
1. What's your most frequent 'normal person fantasy'?
2. What's your favorite picture of yourself, and why? (link, plz)
3. Whats the best thing to do with a alien from Venus and a microwave?
1. What have you been up to lately?
2. Have you done any more stress drawings?
3. Do you like carrot cake?
***
Carrot Cake is a'ight. I hear it is good soaked in milk, but I have never tried it that way. I'm mostly a big fan of chocolately things, and despise lemon-flavored gunks. That's where my tastes lie on the sugary-candies scale. The lemon thing has led to some harsh disagreement with friends before. Give me a big block of German chocolate from the Black Forest any day.
I am ironically almost too stressed to do any stress drawings right now. I may try one a little later tonight, if I can stay awake long enough. I might put it in my blog. I'm just going to start cramming everything I write/draw into my blog, regardless of content. I'll put some old stuff in there too, if I can calm down enough to edit anything.
Do you have any requests?
As for what I've been up to lately, mostly this week I've been; sleeping, crying, pacing in circles, having moments of still calm where I'm staring at the wall in deep thought, or attempting to blog (but mostly deleting it after the paragraphs turn into unreadable gibberish). Some of my gibberish is below.
All of my close friends are giving me weird looks lately, but other than that they are going about their business and politely ignoring the fact that I'm leaking rage all over the floor. I suspect this is because they have a hard time imagining me this being angry, as most peoples memories of me consist of phrases like 'fun-loving guy', 'funny pervert', or 'lovable loon'. I think most of the people around me don't exactly understand whats happening to me right now, and I don't blame them, because it's pretty complicated and I'm not acting the way they expect me to. It's pretty hard to boil down 16 years of fuck-ups coming to a head in one month, to a wit-filled twitter post in 140 words or less.
I expect to be dead within a few months. I've always known my lifespan won't be as long as the people around me, but the particular way I'm going out is one of the reasons I'm so angry. My kidney is coming loose. I didn't even know a kidney could come loose, until the medical records and a RN friend of mine informed me of this. I figured it was merged in there by now or something, but apparently it can still reject. I'm sure the stress of my SSA cases are helping matters wonderfully towards that as well. The SSA sent me to a chiropractor the other day for my physical exam. A chiropractor. Didn't take any x-rays (you know, to see the gaping holes in my old kidneys), or have me on a treadmill (which would make sense, when I've complained about fatigue and never having energy to get through a whole day), or a sleep study (because I've complained of nightmares), or even draw blood. No, they sent me to a chiropractor, which has fuck-all to do with anything I've actually listed as a consequence of my disease. And I'm sure that the lady in the SSA desk married to her middle class husband who reads the chiropractor reports will be quite pleased to see that there's 'nothing wrong with me', and that they can save more money now that I'm a regular member of society. More hoops. Keep throwing hoops at that guy until he gives up or dies.
Its increasingly harder for me to relate to anyone around me on an emotional level because of this. Everyone keeps offering emotional support and sympathy, but nobody besides Jaime is trying to give me an actual solution to any of these things, or way to fix my life. That's really what I want more than anything else in the world right now, and nobody can give it to me. "Yes, I know you love me very much. Yes, I know I can come talk to you if I need a shoulder. Can you fix this? I need this fixed somehow. Any ideas? Any solutions at all? None? FUCK." I'd give up everything I've ever had if someone could fix this. Jaime herself is going to crack eventually, she has to. Nobody can take this much abuse, if its not for their children or their spouse.
Yesterday after I woke up from another fevered dream, I climbed onto facebook to see if I had any messages, ignoring the feeds (which depress me greatly these days). I happened across some pictures of a high school friend named Shauna, and her daughter. They are absolutely gorgeous pictures, showing a lot of love between them, making funny faces at the camera with each other in a small album. After a few seconds, I started crying. I started crying because Shauna didn't look like herself from previous pictures. Shauna in previous pictures looked very much like I remember her, a girlish punk-rocker chic that was largely unchanged by time from high school. In these recent pictures, she had not lost a single bit of her beauty, but she looked very different from those punkish pics that reminded me of our times in Grayson County. She looked like a mother. She looked like a woman. Shauna grew up, and she and her daughter are very happy.
And here I am, 16 years later and not a damn thing to show for it. For 16 years, I thought, "Oh, this whole mess will get fixed eventually; and I'll have my wife, and my cozy little house, and a job that I prolly hate (but it pays the bills), and at night before sleep I'll come home and work on my little nerd fantasies that I'll tell everyone will make me rich and famous someday but never will. But I'll be satisfied because that's better than what I had." That's my fantasy. That's a dull and dreary reality that so many people have around me, and I'm not even going to make it that far. Even if they don't have all the pieces, they got at least one or two of them. Everyone around me keeps making noise about how they're loney and can't get laid, or about how liberal/conservative politicians anger them, or whatever the fuck they're babbling about that day, and I seethe in quiet jealously because they at least have a stability that I've never had. I know you don't have much stability, either, but at least you got Nic. I got left by both women I wanted to marry, both because being the wife of a financially-draining cripple did not appeal to them. Can't say I blame them.
I want this fixed. This is not ever getting fixed. This is as good as it gets, and will only slide into getting worse until it ends. I was hit with that reality a month and a half ago. I'm just wasting time until that happens. When I close my eyes I see inside my flesh where the kidney is and imagine the connecting tube between it and my ureter, slowly unraveling like a rope on a rickety bridge across a chasm in an Indiana Jones movie. Tick tock, tick tock.
My Questions Three;
1. What's your most frequent 'normal person fantasy'?
2. What's your favorite picture of yourself, and why? (link, plz)
3. Whats the best thing to do with a alien from Venus and a microwave?