Woke up demonically hungry. Felt like there was a weasel gnawing on my guts. Hunger pangs as I got my lunch together.
I’m doing it,. god damn it, leave me alone!
Probably means I should inject some insulin. But who knows? It’s been a month since I even tried to test my blood sugar. About that long since I injected.
Yeah, that’s dumb. But the fucking glucometer kept returning errors instead of readings and depression makes me easily discouraged and so guess what, I got discouraged. \
There is only so much I can take. So much frustration, so much failure, so much distress. Past that point, I have to GTFO.
I am great at GTFO. It’s staying in the fight till I triumph that stumps me.
I feel so weak and tired most of the time. It’s like there’s nothing left of me I am desperately hungry on all levels. And a black hole is eating me from the inside.
I will do my best to find my injector pen and inject. Anything if it will get this god damned hunger under control.
I keep trying to get my shit together but there’s just too much of it.
Found the pen. Oh crap, it’s empty. Now I need to gather the strength of will to go get another insulin cartridge from the fridge.
Pretty sure I have one.
Once more, I wish that I wasn’t left in my own care. I am a very sick man and I deserve to be cared for by someone competent.
Well I got the cartridge. Now to hunt up my needle tips and swabs.
All right. I have now injected. Hopefully I will feel better soon.
Local fan Stewart Smythe passed away recently. Died peacefully in his sleep, or as Kenny Rogers put it in his iconic song The Gambler, he broke even.
I suppose that’s inappropriate.But fuck it. There’s no wrong way to grieve. It is what it is.
And grieving is what it is. We weren’t close friends by any means. But as part of FRED and countless BCSFA meetings, I must have had hundreds of meals with him, and that is more than enough time to feel a strong if casual connection to the guy.
The news was quite shocking. We all knew he was having some pretty serious medical issues and was in and out of the hospital a fair bit, but somehow none of us thought he was in mortal peril.
And coming on the heels of my Uncle Sonny’s passing as it did, I can’t help but feel like I have reached the phase of life when mortality clears its throat to remind you it is there, waiting for you.
And I wish I could say that it galvanized me into realizing how precious life was and how important it was to get the most out of every moment and thus spurred me into a joyous frenzy of carpe diem productivity and bliss….;but that would be a lie.
Truth is, the though of my own mortality comforts me.
Because it reminds me that eventually, all this bullshit will end.
More after the break.
The joy of suffering
No, this isn’t going to be a masochist manifesto. as fun a phrase as that is.
Instead, what I am going to talk about is how we inflict a lot of pain on ourselves in our efforts to avoid pain.
The classic case would be the person with a toothache that keeps putting off going to the dentist. They end up suffering 24/7 for days or weeks or even months because they can’t control themselves long enough to endure the hour or so of pain and discomfort involved in seeing their dentist.
In no sense and on no plane of existence does this make sense. Logically speaking. getting it taken care of right away is undeniably the smart thing to do.
But so much of life’s pain comes down to something a lot like this scenario. Especially if, like me, you are someone who forms and reinforces aversions quite easily.
The key here is that what we are talking about is fear versus pain. Our hapless reluctant dental patient knows that the pain will end when they see the dentist, but is unable to overcome their fear of the dentist to accomplish it.
That why fear is so much deadlier than pain. Pain hurts and that’s it. Fear makes you hurt yourself and then keeps you from getting relief by making you scared of the doctor then makes you scared of anything that reminds you of the million and ten things you “should” be doing so you end up burying yourself in the only places you feel safe, namely inside a video game.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Thus, learning how to overcome fear – otherwise known as courage – is super important. If you develop your ability to say “no” to fear and shove it out of your way, you will transcend the limitations of fear and become stronger, healthier, and more free as you actualize the heck out of yourself.
Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
The problem with that formula is that great big “if”. Sure, IF I did that, it would work. Of that I have no doubt.
But will I do it? Probably not. I feel too tired and fragile right now to push against the membrane. It will take me a while to gather the energy to try to free myself.
And to be honest, I might not get there any time soon.
Once more, I feel like a balloon batted back and forth by fear and ambition. I really want to escape my unsatisfactory life and get to a place where I am using my energy and talent in an active and satisfying way and finally making my mark on the world.
But that desire is strangled in the womb by fear and despair every goddamned day.
I’m working on it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.