Caution: Too Much Blind Faith Will Kill You

Most people just are not all that perceptive of other people. Wrapped up, each, in their own miseries they have no energy to spare for the problems of others. They tend to pigeonhole people as they did ideas and react to that deviation (from a wholly imaginary picture) with astonishment and annoyance.

"Wow, of all the people, Julia must have really changed since high school." or Good 'ol Chuck, he wouldn't do a thing like that!"

The thing is, though, Julia and Chuck? - they haven't changed at all.

They, like all of us, were not one static Julia, one unchanging Chuck, but dozens.

At differing points in our lives, each of those dozens is in control for a little while. Eventually, most of the people who think they "knew" us just haven't happened to see the one who finally breaks out for good.

Now, I'm not saying that we don't change as we move through life. That we don't grow and incorporate our lessons as we go along. I do, however, think that much like battered psyches, at our hearts we're what can only be called multiple personalities. We're little walking disorders.

Proust believed that each person is made up of thousands of what he called "little selves", almost like the cells of the body. Each one of them came into being at a time of life that was important in one way or another. And they just co-exist side by side, without communicating with each other or even knowing each other exists.

He figured the reason that people can contradict themselves, by word or action, is because one little self, or group of little selves, believes one way and acts one way out of habit, while another one, formed at another time, goes right on behaving in the opposite way as though that were the only way possible.

"Pathfinders" states that an individual who is seperating from aspects of an old self must endure some loss of belonging while a new and different path is being explored. That it may be temporary and end with rapprochment. But a pathfinder must be prepared to face ostracism from his or her reference group. By the time that those who are most sorely threatened by the pathfinder's changed course are ready to accept it, the pathfinder may no longer care about their friendship.

I think that as we go through life there are points at which we can consciously decide to forge a new little self. I think the best thing we can do for ourselves, to honor our struggles, is to do all we can to ensure the new self incorporates the best of all our others - merging our multiple personalities into a better, stronger version. A version that is better equipped and more self-aware than the ones that have gone before, a version that is actually learning the lessons it was put here to learn.

Much like the six million dollar man. heh.

Personally, I know I've refused to learn lessons I need to. Or, rather, there are some I've been unable to learn, for whatever reason. That while I've incorporated much there is so much more I've lost and so much more to learn.

All through this last year in dealing in a far better way than I ever would have (or did) previously with the physical limitations and the financial losses that being 'broken' has brought I've still managed to hold onto the optimism that firmly believes that my body can be 'fixed'. I haven't lost that woman, and she's a woman who doesn't endlessly complain and god, I'm so proud of her.

It's only been in the last couple of weeks - and over this last week spent mostly in bed with a devastating permanent headache - that I've come to understand that the doctors aren't giving up but that, at some point, *I* have to give up the notion that I'm going to be able to go back to the way life was before the military. That maybe, just maybe, I have to start thinking of myself as 'disabled'. If only for the simple reason that I'll never be able to do things I've always taken for granted and that I'll need to change the way I think of myself and my physical abilities.

That when they say I've plateaued, after all this hard work and hard time, that I won't get any better than I am now - they really mean that I have to change the way I cope. That I have to forge a new self from the old.

That optimism can no longer be what keeps me going. That if I continue to rely on it and only it - it will destroy me.

But, I also think that it's useless to fully swing the other way. I refuse to believe that I won't get worse - unless I exercise, as they've opined. Embrace that and I may as well fully commit myself to the path that Burgle laughingly put forth the other day. The path of refusing to do anything, anything but sit on the couch and eat. To make my new goal in life a BMI of say, 80. To literally take them at their word.

To find new ways of dealing and completely new routes of getting where I wish to go. To take a headache that responds to no painkiller on earth and, like today, erase it with an anti-inflammatory and a bath of lavender and peppermint.

Even if those things don't always work - they prove that hope for relief, for times of normality exists. And sometimes, it benefits no one to allow optimism to die. Re-thought, re-tooled, approached from a different direction maybe, but not abandoned entirely.

I won't be able to jog or run. But, seriously, *brrrrr* who the hell wants to? I can walk. The large muscles in my legs may not be able to bike up hills but there are bikes in gyms that don't require them to.

I'm sure that there are ways I can utilize a pool - I just have to find the right strokes. That I may even be able to learn a modified kayak stroke that won't kick in the nerve impingement.

The possibilities are endless. And, if I'm not starting a campaign to become the world's most obese woman, what else would I possibly want to do with my time?

I've got places I want to go. And no one's going to get me there - but me.

Pre-Post

Following is the post that I hope explains where I've gone.

I will continue to post - and hopefully more often - but they'll be writey-er bits more than "this-is-my-life" posts.

And, of course, come February 2008 we'll return for a few months (and maybe longer) to another chapter of "Gets Out More" as I head off to Indonesia and Australia.

If there's anyone left out there - thanks for continuing to return. :)

All the Things I've Left Behind

As I walk along the edge of night I think about what's changed inside of me this year. I wonder if I can find the words to explain it, explain it in the way I feel it needs to be put forth, in a way that all of you, my faithful friends, will understand. I think about how I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for certain things, lost my ability to listen to the continual grievances of others, the inner turmoil of my own I seem to have left behind.

Somehow, somewhere along this last year I've moved from an internal static place I've been all my life and into a state of continual movement. I look at others and if they're not doing something to change what they endlessly lament about, I shut down, move on. I look at problems as they crop up in my own life and suddenly, rather than worry at them like a dog with a bone, I work out what can be done, shut up, do it, not do it, and move on.

Moving. Always moving. Externally. Internally.

Without the angst I've carried all my life.

Without feeling any need to understand, to utilize the blog and work it out for myself, endlessly turning it all over and over in my mind as I carefully scrutinize each phrase, bump, crevice and scar.

Over my lifetime many a time I've felt as if I were no longer a master of my fate, no more the captain of my soul. As if my life were bobbing on an open sea, a rough and unforgiving ocean infested with pirates and sirens. An open vista ahead filled only with endless daily new frustrations, of long cold wet wasted bus journeys, of pointless telephone calls and fruitless letters, of malice and misunderstandings.

I've never known what was happening to me, or why. I never felt young and carefree. Once, long ago, I wanted the world but for so many years the world has been too much to have.

I may be at the end of that particular journey, a journey where I've learned that out of all the confusion comes the answer to the question I didn't ask, but should have: not where should I live, what should I do or be or even, where do I belong, but how do I become? How do I clear out the detritus I've always held so close to my heart so that I can find the ME in me on the other side? The one I've suspected was right here all along. The one that has never left, only hid.

I wonder if that happened as a result of an event that disapppointed me in some fundamental way or perhaps it was simply something that was born hidden in me, fed by every small disappointment and shattering of illusion from when I was that spirited child who believed that although the world was rotten, it could be changed.

I've stubbornly clutched a stifled hope that we could keep that vital sense of mystery and openness all our lives, that belief that the world is shot through with blazing stars and that terrible things, sad things were only fleeting. That somehow, I could break free of the inner disquietude, regain my whimsy and continue life unfettered.

My life has been reduced to its simplest essentials, uncluttered, straightforward. It feels clean.

I can no longer linger near what is dark and what isn't good for me merely because it's exciting or a challenge to my sense of the extreme.

My heart has become too fragile for such folly. And too strong to continue its acceptance.

No longer encumbered by internal unease I feel wide open for anything, like perfection verging on chaos, like an eleven year old girl.

All of our travels in this life have secret destinations we only become aware of years later. Moments may contain a lifetime and carry us into the next. We live lies, half-truths, half-lives if we do not follow our deep dreams. This is how we move forward, expand with the universe and how we find our way back to ourselves.

The sun, getting low on the horizon, warms my face as I look out to sea. A gull cries out over the waves. Nobody can see very deeply into the ocean and who really knows what will happen next? As the sun shoots its rays all this way across time and space, my heart is pierced by hints of following seas ahead.

We're seekers then, if we choose, and now that I've stepped over that threshold I've searched for all of my life the vast blue skies are full of endless possibility.

Inside and out.

Finally.

abandon all hope who enter here

for this is where all things are left behind

every doubt and every cowardice must die

I Keep....

...thinking I should have something to say.

A couple of days ago, I did! But then I forgot it.

I Say Potato

Although online grocery shopping is, don't get me wrong, an absolute GENIUS idea and one that I am frankly quite pleased with since I'm not technically allowed to lift stuff.....

Sometimes it's hard to understand what exactly you're buying because occasionally those grocery people use words that you ascribe a different meaning to.

For example, to me "sparkle" is something your teeth do when they are nice and shiny and clean.

Which is how I ended up with bright blue sparkle infused toothpaste that tastes like bubblegum.

Green Thumb, Baby

Some of you are already aware that my approach to gardening is.. well.. sort of "throw seeds and they shall grow" and that I believe that there are millions of acres of grass out there that don't have anyone standing around watering them that grow just.fine so why should I have to water?

Today it's raining and I'm still sort of in my jammies but while a movie was downloading I thought I should wander out and clip off the dead flowers on the lilac bush.

Then I thought, hey! my little plants (whatever they are) aren't getting enough sun so maybe I should trim the bush itself. Then I noticed the neighbors hedge was obstructing my buttercups (no, they are NOT a weed. in some dimension) and then I thought.....

Suffice it to say, 25 minutes later, the landlord walks around the corner of the house to be confronted with me - soaking wet, jammied, big scissors hanging out of my mouth and standing over a honking big pile of debris.

But under one of the big shrubby thingamajigs, once I cut a ton of it out, I actually found a WHOLE NEW PLANT! A big one.

And I not only feel like I accomplished something I also avoided moving furniture around in the floodplain that is my apartment so that the 'new' carpet guys can come in and actually give me new carpeting.

Avoidance is a beautiful thing.

I'm Totally Just Copying and Pasting

"Ha! Words of the day! Self-deprecatory. But I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right."

"You mean desecration?"

"No, when you put yourself down, all overly-modest-like. Desecration is something you do to a grave or a dollar bill."

"Desecration is like that too, destroying yourself."

"I'm not sure I'm giving you that one. My word is self-deprecatory. Which a friend of mine pointed out could be exchanged for self-defecating."

*snort*

"Kay, next one... defenestrate."

"Wha?"

"It means to throw someone out a window, although, to me it sounds like what they do when you're skinned alive. I just can't remember that word at the moment."

"No way. That is so not a word. Just because you read it on a website does NOT mean it's a word. It's not a word I've ever heard."

"Yeah, but I'm good with stuff like that."

"Oh, REALLY? Did I ever tell you I was an English major? I'm getting my dictionary..... how do you spell it again?"

"D-e-f-e-n-e-s.."

"HA! It's not here. It's not in the dictionary. It's not a word. English major, I told you, right?"

"What year is that dictionary? 2002? Didn't you know they actually update those things now? Let me email you the link to an ONLINE dictionary."

"...oh."

"English major, you say?"

"Fuck you."