From Here You're On Your Own: "I'm livin' for givin' the devil his due"

Michael the Archangel by Guido Reni, Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome, 1636.

This picture has been swirling around in my mind for the past few weeks for some reason.
It seems like a good metaphor for my internal world.
We all have our demons to contend with and the moment you slay one dragon it often seems like another one sneaks up to roast your buttocks.

The good news is that very often that roasting tush is exactly what you need to get you moving and to help you grow beyond whatever current situation you've found yourself in.
Nothing motivates a body to push forward like a giant pain in the ass.

Today is the 8th anniversary of my diagnosis of Clival Chordoma.
November 18th, 2005 Dr. Hill over at Emory University Medical Center gave me the news.
A couple days later when I told a friend's mom about the diagnosis she burst into tears before I could even get the "-oma" in Chordoma all the way out.
It was a trying period in my life made more trying by the divorce I was going through at the same time.

I've been out of town working for the past couple weeks and it's been a good thing to be out of the neighborhood, much as I love it, and to reflect a bit.

And since I had a strange dream about DumDum last night, I might as well start there.

"Hel-loo, DumDum."

The truth is, while I've given her a bit of an occasional tweaking on this here blog-o-sphere, and as much as it truly pains me to say this, I was pretty much head over heels for the girl after the first date.
By the end of the second month, I knew exactly when, where, and how I was going to propose.
(Don't be scared: I was going to wait a year to do so, but that's where my head and heart were at that time.)
But that's not how things turned out and I spent the money set aside for the ring on my Harley and the subsequent trip cross country.
And while the trip truly changed me in ways I might not have predicted, and while I absolutely had the time of my life, it wasn't until I got home and was once again just down the street from her, that I slowly began to realize how angry I still was over that lost relationship.
That was a large part of the reason that Ms.X and I broke up.
I just wasn't done with the grieving and occasional bouts of outright fury.
Ms. X is an absolute angel and deserved much better and it's not hyperbole to say that my very own dog, Mikey, would push me in front of a bus to be close to her.

We all have our own journey and we all make our own deal.
"Ya' buy the ticket, ya' take the ride", as a wise man once said, but sometimes the ticket you buy is not for the ride you get and things get just plain weird.

Last night I had one of those dreams that make you believe in the "out of body experiences" the hippies love to talk about.
In it, I floated down to DumDum's house, still seeking that most basic answer to the question we all have when your heart is broken, "Why couldn't it have been different? Why didn't it work out when I was trying so damn hard?"
And sometimes the answer is so completely unhelpful that you wish you hadn't asked the question in the first place:
"Because."
That's all there is sometimes and honestly, it's not that different from having cancer.
Why you?
Because.
Why not you?

You have to fight to keep in the game whether it's love or literally your life and it wasn't until a good friend gave me a stern "talkin' to" that I realized how immature and selfish I had been this last year as I worked thru my various feelings.
I had been doing a version of "well now I'm not gonna care for anything if that's all I'm gonna get in return".
Not healthy and definitely not fun and sexy and there for a second, I had to consider that I might need to nickname myself DumDum for not catching on sooner.

But the "talking to" helped and I feel as if I'm moving in the right direction again.
There are good things on the horizon and this project I'm finishing now is a part of that.

I looked up at the full moon tonight and thought of all the people I've been fortunate enough to know and love over the years and I'm thankful that I had them with me, if only for a brief moment, and I'm grateful to still be here to write about it.

There are things worth fighting for and you're one of them.
Keep fighting.

I'll see you out there soon friends.
Thank you all for reading along.

XOXO,
EPPdF