So, last night, I was switching out some medical equipment…
Can I just say that I about need to just kick my ass over this whole thing? The self-pitying that I get up to when I start to feel bad for myself because the rest of my life is going to be a series of tubes and medicines and trips to the doctors? As if everyone’s lives aren’t a series of tubes and pills and trips to the doctors, if they’re lucky? I would like to tell you that I’m being all graceful about it, but I am only very clumsily stumbling towards getting over my damn self.
I mean, that’s the damn thing. I can get up to a self-pity party as well as the next person, but lately I’m just tired of it.
So, where was I?
Oh, right, so I’m switching out some medical equipment and I need a place to stick a filter, so I open up my night-stand and what should I find, but the aforementioned red confirmation Bible, which contains, as previously stated, my grandma’s noodle recipe, in my handwriting, written down on a calendar page from her house.
But also, it’s got a couple of letters in it, one to my oldest nephew, before he was born, when his mom had some major complication during her pregnancy and we were all afraid he would die before he could be born. In it, I mention that he’s going to turn a boy (my brother) into a man.
Clearly, either I was completely mistaken or it’s just taking him a decade or two. Ha, I wonder if I should give that to him or not. I tried to give him a picture of my Grandma, but he left it at my house. So, I don’t know if he appreciates sentimental shit like that or not.
But the other letter is from me to God. The general gist of which is “Please take care of all of my friends, who seem to be fucking up tremendously, and send me a man, so that I can be normal.”
Ha, so you know, like blogging, but with God as the only reader.
Dang.
I bet He’s glad I’ve turned to you guys.
Plus, He’s been terrible at getting me dates.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Hi B, I’m mostly a lurker, but I’ve loved your blog for years and hate that your health stuff has been piling on you like this. I’ve had some different-from-yours but similarly-mysterious health issues over the past few years, and so much of what you’re going through resonates with me – often in a “wow I wish I’d managed to articulate it like that years ago” kind of way because some unresolved bit suddenly clicks – that I just want to crawl through teh intertubes to Tennessee and give you big sickly-people hugs, if you’d want them. Or, like, read to you or something.
And then I write another paragraph about how the tired of self-pity stage is a good and (emotionally) productive one, the kind of stage of grief that almost does its work for you. And then anything else I try to write sounds even stupider than that, so there you go.
Ha, but sincerely, thank you for that comment. It really means a lot to me to know that other people are going through this stuff and trying to figure out how to deal with it and that what I’m feeling goes with the territory.
It’s really a great comfort to me. Which I know sounds corny to say, but there it is.
The exasperation at yourself for feeling sorry for yourself really is a good sign. The rage-against-the-fates thing is necessary, but it gets old.
Thinking you need to get over yourself is the beginning of taking stock of what you really do have, which is the precursor to getting wildly creative with what you’ve got instead of worrying about what you haven’t got.