Learning the Ropes

I'm dipping a tentative toe into the blog world with these first few words. I have not always tagged behind people, so this is really rather different for me. However, it's only one part not having the know-how and equal parts wondering if I have anything to say that might be of interest to anyone else besides myself. But then, I guess that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because primarily, I'm doing this for one person anyway, and that's myself. If I can help anyone along the way, that's a bonus. As I peek in and read other blogs I see it all comes down to that end anyway, so here goes! It's cheaper than going into therapy and we really want to stay away from those drugs now, right? Or hey! Worse..."natural supplements". They aren't even regulated. Ephedrine...or Ephedra is a supplement and not considered a drug.

As I ponder and contemplate the things that have occurred to me the last five years, I realized I needed a place that I could lay it all out to examine and analyze it's nuances. So many times, when something medically immense has taken place in a person's life, we don't know how to deal with it. Because it's brand new and because it's not usually something we get the chance to practice on, we so often flounder and get it wrong.

 We are also 'directed' on how to deal with it by others who have no clue how to deal with it themselves, yet feel that they are because they have that medical degree and are armed with all kinds of textbooks and journals.
 
Or because they love you, they feel they're expert advisers for you. Right up front I have to say, until you've worn the moccasins, (as the saying goes) stick to suggesting, but don't try to tell me how I feel - or should feel. I already know that. And it's not even close to the way you might imagine.

Five years ago, in May of 2001 I had an aneurysm. It ruptured. And it was heavy duty! Pre to that, I had been an extremely active person; I ran daily, biked and hiked weekends, climbed mountains twice a year...or as often as I could get to them.

I ate healthy and stayed fit in my own complete home gym. I didn't smoke and rarely drank but for the few special occasions such as weddings or the holidays. There never seemed to be enough time in my days for the things I wanted to do, but I crammed as much as possible into every 24 hours and loved it that way!
My life was generally full and not complicated with health issues of any kind.

Then May 29th 2001 arrived. I found I wasn't as energetic as I wanted to be in prepping for a busy Memorial marathon weekend. I needed something to keep me going without lagging. I knew with all the things we had planned, that I needed an energy boost. So I bought some Metabolife to balance my metabolism. Yesirree! I was going to get it done. Much the way Steve Bechler must have felt that day in 2003 as he was getting ready to pitch his game for the Baltimore Orioles. Steve was the 23-year-old pitcher who wanted to combat fatigue & decided to try Metabolife to revitalize himself. But like Steve, that wasn't in my future either.

I say "like" Steve, but not quite, because I lived, Steve died.

At that time, Metabolife contained the Big E. For those who still haven't heard about this wonder herb, that's Ephedrine. The herb that people are trying to get put back on store shelves because they want to 'look good'. Gambling with their own lives for vanity. Russian Roulette for the buff body. All of which could be viewed very prettily laid out in a casket.

I took my first little pill in the morning of that first day, another in the afternoon and pill three before bed. I was feeling pretty good about all this; I was doing something healthy for myself and doing it "naturally" and not paying out money for prescription drugs.
So! The following morning, I took my fourth pill and went outside to do a little gardening. That was the last thing I remember until I 'woke up' in hospital seven weeks later totally paralyzed on the left side. My good fortune and what probably saved my life was that I had two doctors living right next door to me and they were tending their garden as well, when I hit the ground. They ran to where I was laying on the ground and made an immediate evaluation. They had me medi-vaced to the hospital downtown in eight minutes.

That was to be the first day of my second life. The one where you find out you're incredibly more resilient than you ever thought possible; the one where you find out through sheer determination that you can amaze yourself as well as the medical world. The one where, if you look at things as a challenge instead of a disability, they are surmountable. And the one where you find out who your friends are and sadder, just how very weak your family structure is. Those people who 'love you' were all of a sudden way too busy to call or lend a hand. The ones who will 'try to get around' or if they find the time, they will pick up that item you're needing but can't get yourself. Have they always been that self-involved or have you just been too self-involved yourself to notice? New life; new questions.

Counter that however, with those you never noticed in your life before. They come forward and quietly sustain you as you plod along in your new life. Supportive, helpful, not just given to lip service as surprisingly, family members only seem to manage. These quiet friends are there to bring you out of the hospital for the day and take you for long peaceful drives and/or to a wheelchair-friendly restaurant for lunch. They run all the little errands for you that your loved ones are (sic) too busy to run and they sit and listen as you try to figure out what happened in your life literally overnight.

I am learning so many valuable lessons in my second life. Some I wish I hadn't ever needed to learn; others I am eternally grateful for learning.

As Maya Angelou so eloquently stated:
"Courage allows the successful woman to fail and learn powerful lessons from the failure...so that in the end, she really hasn't failed at all!"

At any rate...bear with me here...I'm still learning. Now there's this blog thing! ~*wink*~

Ideology 101

There was a request made when I wrote on Facebook about the genesis and affect of ideology to be put in one blog piece so that it could be shared by those who don't visit Facebook. That made sense to me so this is that piece. It’s long, I make no apologies for that. If I’m going to lay out my thoughts, that is usually what happens. I think long.

Ideology is always a blinder - it limits vision to what fits the reality tunnel dictated by the ideology's worldview. That's how the Nazis believed they were building a "master race" while degrading Germany to unthinkable depravity, how Mao called wholesale extermination of intellectuals a "Cultural Revolution," and how Stalin killed without conscience, millions of working class people to build the "Worker's Paradise."

The nature of ideology is that it defines the world by the theory, it doesn't create the theory by comparing it to the world. In the case of Trumpism, the central beliefs - that the Government is evil and corrupt, that only Trump can "drain the swamp," and that those who support him are the only real, loyal Americans - are the operative realities; the first principles. Anything that questions those tenets is by definition, false.

In the case of Libertarianism, the operative first principle is that all government (except, conveniently, that which protects private property) is illegitimate. Therefore, anything the government does that is beneficial is inherently corruptive. It cannot be otherwise. Therefore, voting for a Libertarian is, to an observer outside their reality tunnel, much like hiring someone to run a nuclear plant that believes that physics is an evil conspiracy.

I hasten to add here, that ideologies of the left are not exempt from this phenomenon. Any set of beliefs that operates as a "first principle," that is to say a moral axiom that must be held if you are to be considered a "good person" will have the same reality-excluding affect.

Now assuming that you are not operating from a position of omniscience, that is to say, you're not G-d, you live in a tunnel. You can only observe so much, know so much, process so much in a moment, or in a lifetime. The vast majority of "the real" is, and must be outside of your knowledge. But certain axioms and habits of thought narrow the reality tunnel to reject anything that doesn't accommodate them, while others expand the reality tunnel - they admit the possibility of new information, and expand perception and understanding to accommodate it.

Ideology is a set of rules that purport to explain how the world "really" works. Ideologies are not organic, they are artificially constructed and propagated. Their genesis comes when some segment of the middle class is suddenly economically displaced. Suddenly, their old, inherited answers and folkways are rendered inoperable, and they search, often desperately, for a new explanation.

Invariably, there is a demagogue to provide them with one - usually self-serving, but always flattering to those who adopt it - you, oh downtrodden one, are the vanguard of the future, the true patriots, the moral folk who will tear down the old order and create the new...

...by doing, and thinking, exactly as I tell you.

Surviving a Dead Marriage

One thing I’ve learned for sure, possibly the most valuable lesson of my going on forty years of “coupledom”, is this – you can’t have a relationship with someone who is unwilling, or cannot, have a relationship with you! A simple, basic truth if I’ve ever seen one. I know this from years and years of knocking, pounding, hammering, and banging my head bloody against a locked door – the door to my husband’s sensibilities and understanding. I have discovered one thing when I finally stopped pretending all was cozy with my friends. 

When people said I was lucky that Greg loved me so much to buy me wonderful things and I want to told them frankly that if anything, he does this for two reasons only - how it look to the outside world - to his friends and workmates, and that works for him. But also to appease what little guilt he feels about ignoring me 70% of the time. 
The rest of the time...the other 30% is spent ridiculing and being abusive to me - spitting and screaming in my face, calling me names unfit to type here and shoving me around. 

This man certainly is not interested in my life and what I do with my time. He's not ever even asked about it, only if it has to do with him and if I try to share it otherwise, he shuts it off...shuts me off, coughing over my speech, falling asleep or leaving the room.

If I share things with him in email that we used to be mutually interested in, he doesn't even bother to open the emails. Not music. Not hockey. Not cats, or cars... Yet I am expected to listen to hours of what goes on in his life, how his workday went, his drive home and his arguments with whomever - the irritant du jour.
 
And constantly being accused of not caring if I didn’t sit up and intently hang off each and every word he tells me about friends of his and their problems. 
And how much they loved him because he's such a good listener. Really? I was never offered shares to that side of him!
There are lots of us married singles around out there I have noticed since I’ve joined photography forums  and begun playing guitar again. People who are not only eager to help me on my mission to play well again, but actually inviting me to their homes for jam sessions because my husband can’t be bothered to pick up his guitar, bought but never played or his drum sticks to share even a half hour a week playing tunes together. 

Maybe us married singles are even a majority, who knows? What has helped me the most to survive and thrive in a long-dying and long dead ‘marriage’ is simply that I made up my mind to find kindred spirits and I have. As my husband moves away from the things we used to love together, I am finding more and more people I am moving closer to, who share the things I love. While I remain completely faithful to my marriage vows, I will always be that, I do wonder if even that is appreciated by him or just expected, since he has no feelings of closeness one way or the other. Nor has he ever! 

This determined attitude I have though began way back when I was a kid. However, somewhere along the line after my first marriage dissolved, I lost the way. Growing up, I could see how many people around me had eaten themselves up with negative thoughts and emotions. They were going through the motions of life but not really alive...not living. So what do I do after my first marriage? Why, I marry one of these very people who personifies negativity! Who cares less about the things I do, who is unwilling to share in them and worse, won’t even afford me the time to pursue them myself because I am disabled and overworked in our home. A home that he also cares nothing about. 

In fact, the only thing I can think of offhand that he loves/likes is himself. And what he can do to spoil himself, lavishing gifts and toys on himself to make up for a relationship he doesn't want...obviously! So I have decided that if I have to stay here in this miserable relationship (and do to my lack of income and health care insurance I do need to) I decided, no, I promised myself that I would be different. Not only would I handle whatever challenges he set out for me, I would deal with it without bitterness. To me, this is the ultimate victory, keeping my mind and my heart ever open, not letting the abuses and the negativity of his life turn me into a crusty old curmudgeon. 

I like to think that in making light of difficulties and laughing at the ironies of our lives we can create learning opportunities from the worst of circumstances. It is in real life breakthroughs – other people’s and my own, that I still find strength to go on in my less than blissful partnership. In the darkest, lowest, loneliest times we all need to seek refuge in insights of others like us and they provide us with the strength that can uplift us. Sometimes they come in wonderful, unexpected ways. Friends mostly, old and new, books, music, movies, quotes that give us comfort and support. 

Sometimes nothing helps until time forces us forward, to find our way once more. This is the space at which I find myself now. On the cusp of acceptance that it’s over. It is and has been very difficult for me to handle physical things I’m no longer strong enough to handle. Things doctors have told me to avoid but I am nonetheless forced to do them because my husband is in a frame of mind now that he's allowing the house to fall to ruin too. Unless I am able to do them they are left undone...it doesn't matter to him that his investment in his home is diminishing month by month. What used to possibly be the most beautiful house and grounds on the street are now verging on hovel status. If it weren't for a lawn service that cuts our lawn I'm sure it would look even worse than it does. And being disabled myself, I cannot do any of these things. 

My husband is suffering bipolar depression and will not do anything about it. He’d rather let it eat way at everything like a cancer than to make any effort to mend his life. And until or unless he does that, we are both doomed as a couple. Unfortunately, we have pets who will suffer from this decision too but again, he doesn’t care and I am helpless to force a person to want help if they don’t. I cannot sympathize with him. I could if he were fighting to get better, I'd be fighting right alone side him, but with him not showing any interest in improving his life or ours, I feel nothing but resentment verging on hatred. 

I never in all my life thought I would find myself at this place. With all the issues my husband has had over the years I've always managed to circumvent them and find ways of enjoying my life. That's because I was always able to live with some hope. That is all gone now but for one man who shall remain nameless at this time. Someone in a similar position as I, who 'get's it.'

I had to seek out others to even have a friendly conversation about anything. Or write in a blog to express my feelings that should be going to a husband that cared. And in that, irony emerged. I find I haven’t lost at all. I have to believe this, that I can’t lose again or I will surely perish.