Strange women enjoy EPPdF (rawr)

Anonymous
11:32 PM (11 hours ago)
to me

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Well, what does it say about me?":

You are either insane or the smartest person on the planet (my gut says insane ;)). Anyway, good writing, you're hilarious.
PS what happened to the eye? I gotta know

Marie

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Thank you, Marie!

It's alert and concerned readers like you that make all the late mornings, when I roll out of couch and into pot of coffee, worthwhile.

It's hard work, this non-conforming business.

Mick Jagger said, " It's ok to let yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back."
I let myself go, oh, I guess somewhere late last year or so, and I haven't seen me since.

Which is good b/c I think I needed a long break.

Most mornings, I just keep thinking that, one day, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, as I'm sitting here writing and drinking my coffee and looking at my dog laying out there on the patio, I'll just come walking thru that door and everything will go back to the way it used to be.

Or maybe not.

It's hard to imagine exactly where that would leave me, what with the old me and the new me just standing there looking at each other all googley-eyed and whatnot.

That'd be one helluva fugue moment, I'd say.
But there it is.

I used to be one person, but then that person left, more or less, and this other person sitting here typing away entered the room and took up residence.
So now there's two of me, at least by my last count.

It's ok.
Change is good.
Sometimes.
Not all the times obviously.  (Just ask the dinosaurs.)
But often, change means growth, and that is almost always positive.
Then again, sometimes it's painful.

What I'm trying to say, thru my de-caffeinated brain this morning is this:

A long, long time ago......

In a galaxy, far, far, away.....

NO, NO, NO!!!!!

Now cut that out!
Stop screwing around here.
Geez!  Be serious!

OK, fine.


mm.. Mmm... Hmm (clears throat and begins to type)

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It's funny how things come together.
How they ebb and flow.
I've contended for a long time now that pretty much everything you can think of is cyclical.
Whether it's work, or your personal life, or politics, or the environment, there seems to be a long continuity of things happening together for some greater reason that, most of the time, we just don't see or understand.
You look back over the course of your life, and even thru the most painful moments you can see that if that domino didn't fall then these others over here wouldn't have slid into place and you begin to realize that they were connected all along by some invisible thread stretching out thru space and time, from that unhappy point to this, hopefully, more joyous place.

Maybe that's just me.

But I do have some experience to base it on.

I was packing my bags to head to Florida when I got the call.
It was a Friday, just before Thanksgiving, back in 2005.

The year leading up to that moment had been tough already.
My wife and I had separated, and I had moved in with my mother for what I had thought, and hoped, would be no more than 6 months.  It's not a great a feeling to find yourself going through a divorce, flat broke, and living with your mother.  Not great at all.
I spent most of my days either trying to figure a way out or, as often as not, contemplating the many bad decisions that had led me to be, at 35 years old, living once again, with The Source of the Trouble.
There were no quick solutions
Robert Frost said, "The only way out, is thru."
That was not the answer I was looking for.

I had, somewhat reasonably, thought, I think, ( I believe?) that, once the house sold, the ex and I would have little to argue about and having the largest connection between us at that point severed, would be more ready, emotionally and financially, to go our separate ways.
But the house sold in July of 2005 and here it was November and I was still with tSotT and the ex and I were still arguing.
Over what, I can't remember now.
But in the fall of 2005 that's where things stood.

Then in October I started getting double vision.
Nothing serious at first, just a hint that I might be in line for glasses soon.  Mostly just trouble reading, which was frustrating as hell because it's one of the places I have always found refuge when things were difficult.
A good book can take you far away from your current troubles and during that summer I had already read or re-read many of my favorites:  The Correspondence of Ernie Pyle, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Life of Pi, Love in the Time of Cholera, Water for Elephants, Belle Canto, and others.
Now reading was difficult and unpleasant for me.
But then, one morning late in the month, I woke to find that I couldn't open my right eye all the way.
It was imperceptable to others but I immediately knew something was not right and headed directly to my chiropractor.
I know.
That makes no sense at all.
Except that I had become good friends with my chiropractor during my divorce and would often stop after work to get my back and my attitude adjusted.
Dr. Audra is one of those rare people that is almost always positive, almost always in a good mood, almost always available to help a friend.
She is the type of friend that you wish you had a hundred more of in your life.
And so, it was to Dr. Audra that I went with my malfunctioning eyeball.

"Yeah.  That's a problem.  It shouldn't be doing that.  You should see someone.  Like, right away."

So, I did.

An optometrist at first.
Then an ophthalmologist.
Then a neuro-ophthalmologist.

And again, it's one of those quirks of fate or luck or ......whatever, that determined outcome.

As I was sitting in the neuro-ophthalmologist's office filling out forms, there was a space for:
"Medical History of the Patients Father" (or something approaching that).
My father died in 1973 of, depending on who you ask, a massive aneurysm or a massive heart attack, but, because I put "Aneurysm" in the box next to "Medical History of Patient's Father", my doctor decided to go the extra precautionary step of sending me to the MRI lab.
It was, at that time, my doctor being a bit of a "Nervous Nelly" to send me for the MRI since she was sure that I had something called Myesthenia Gravis - a bummer to pronounce for sure, but no more than some steroids and some extra doctor visits and I'd be good as new.
Or at least I'd manage.
Not a big deal was the upshot.

But then, smash/cut to an afternoon in November and me packing my bags to head off to Florida to visit friends and stay on the beach and eat some good home cooked fish based meals and the phone rings.

And it's Doctor Hill from Emory and,


 "................. the results of the MRI are in and we've found something abnormal................"


*long inhalation*


"........Dr. Neumann has ..........nuero-surgeon...................we think...................."


*long exhale*


"..........possibly.........surgery................radiation is normal............................clival chordoma............."


"The doctor will be in touch.  Have a good weekend."





And there was a long pause, as I sat on the edge of the bed, phone in hand, staring out the window.


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(more later)