I Just Remembered Monday Is A Holiday

Not for me. But for the doctors.

Talk About An Identity Crisis

I had no idea that gummy bears were so elusive, or multi-cultural. I mean, apparently these guys could be speaking English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Mandarin, or Indonesian. Those are some pretty fucking amazing bears. No wonder they cost 4 dollars a bag.

The thing about healing is

it just takes so long to do.

Shouldn't the bruises be gone by now?
Shouldn't I be strong enough by now?
Shouldn't I be faster by now?
Shouldn't it hurt less by now?

Don't get me wrong, it gets better everyday. Just not as quickly as I want it to.

I Get It

The term is called "fuck buddies."

Now I know what we are. Silly me.

Perspective

It's a funny thing when you get to see yourself through someone else's eyes. Rather, it's a funny thing when you get to see one of your past selves through the eyes of your current self. My first day back at work and I look into the eyes of the new teachers and see the exact same fear that I felt. I can read their minds and hear them asking themselves what the fuck they got into. I can see how they are going to struggle this next year. And now I know what everyone must have thought of me on my first day.

But I don't let them know that I can see their fear. I tell them that I imagine they must be a little nervous, but they aren't showing it at all and I can tell they are going to be great. I tell them how prepared and impressive they are. I tell them all those things because that is what other people said to me, and even though I now know it was a lie, it felt so good at the time, and it made me act a little braver.

Strange how hard it rained

For the first time in a long time I want to believe in God. Last time I really remember wanting to believe I was in the passenger seat of my mother's car, it was dark outside, I was scared and alone and I wanted a friend. I was 15 then and I guess that says a lot about how easy my life has been, and still is. Now I want to believe in God because I wish I had something comforting to say, even though I know it would still hurt. This is not to say that I feel inadequate, just that I wish there were some God damned comfort in the world. Something beyond what I could give. Something to balance out the pain. Maybe it's not so much that I want to believe in God, it's that I wish there were a God. I wish there were a God because I wish for those things for my friends.

On the other hand, I know that the best we are going to get is each other, and that can be as good or as bad as we make it. I know that people can be kind when the world is cruel. Whether it comes in the form of flowers, cards, gummy bears, smiles, hugs, airplane tickets, or phone calls; if we can get outside ourselves long enough to notice other people's sorrows, it makes us gentler and more compassionate creatures. And it puts some other things into perspective so that petty things are no longer such a big deal. Yes, you can often see the best in people when the world is at its worst, but sometimes I feel like our best just isn't good enough. I guess all we can do is give what we have, and then keep on giving.

I kept on looking for quotes, and didn't find any that seemed to help. This is as close as I got...

There are three things which are real:
God, human folly, and laughter.
The first two are beyond our comprehension
so we must do what we can with the third.

That is from the Ramayana. To make this quote true for me I would alter the first two things. I would switch God to beauty or something else, and I would cross out the word "human" so that it was just talking about the folly of the world. But I do believe that bit about laughter and how doing that and trying to make ourselves and each other happy is about the best we can do.

Epiphany Number 1:

I have a home.

That makes all the difference and is not to be treated lightly. Plans must be made accordingly.

Return

I have been thinking a lot in the past week or two. It feels good to be able to have my brain working and processing things again, for a while there I was scared because it seemed I either had nothing good to think about, or I had lost the ability to think the way I used to. I walked around feeling numb and fuzzy inside; my eyes were glazed over and things in my head weren't connecting like they used to. I'm still not exactly sure what the problem was (many contributing factors), but at least for now, it is gone. Now I am thinking so much that it doesn't turn off, but I don't have the patience to sit down and try to write it all out. It's coming in waves, and there is just too much to try to organize it all into nice, neat postings here.

The main point of all my thinking is this: I can remember who I was, I know who I am now, and I can again see other people clearly. The amnesia is gone. I am no longer working off breadcrumbs that I left for myself months and years ago. Suddenly things are clicking and I can give sure answers to things that I was vague and undecided on before. I need to write all these things out so that I have them once school starts and my brain turns to mush again, but I have leg lifts and stretches to do now, and it is focusing on these small, productive activities that is making the big picture so accessible.

The Wasting

As a somewhat open minded, 20-something, there are few things that I would come right out and say that I hate. I have been trained through a liberal education to try to find the value of everything and to rationalize and see the world through other people's eyes. I am, however, becoming fairly good at listing the things that I hate to have in my own life. These things may work for other people, but I hate when I find myself doing them.

The thing I hate the most is wasted time. I define wasted time as time that is not used to either actively think or do something. Almost anything, really. It is for this reason that I hate television, board games, video games, and my current state of being. Right now I feel like I have wasted the better part of a summer, and now I am trapped in a state where I waste nearly all my time. Right now my only options are to lay on the couch and watch television or lay in bed and daydream. Activities that used to take seconds and no forethought whatsoever now take several minutes and a considerable amount of planning and engineering. Example: right now I am sitting on the couch in the living room, and I need to get my phone, a pillow, and a book that are in my room. Normally I could stand up, walk to my room, pick those three things up and come back in literally 5-10 seconds. Now, however, I have to slowly and painfully pick my leg up off the couch and put it on the ground, while I sit myself up on the couch. Then I have to pick my crutches up off the ground and lean them against the couch, put my hands back to the couch so I can push up to the point where I can stand, grab my crutches, and walk slowly to my room. The doctors told me to walk in a different way now, so for every step I have to swing my right leg backward, then swing it forward, plant the heel of my foot down slightly in front of me, and roll my weight forward to the ball of my foot. It takes several minutes for me to walk the short distance down the hallway to my room. Additionally, I will probably have to make several trips back and forth to my room, because I can carry only one thing at a time, not all three things at once.

What's worse is that the pain killers I am on make me sleepy and my thoughts fuzzy so I can't really carry on a sustained thought process. I can't write, nor read, nor carry on conversation, nor prepare myself for the upcoming school year. I lay around all day feeling like I either just woke up, or like I have been up for days and need to go to sleep. I think I am going to stop taking them soon, I can't stand this Rip Van Winkle-esque existence. The only thing pulling me through right now is the thought that I will never again have to waste this much time.