disynthetic

"Write what you know. Write about something real," he says. Among the best advice I have ever received. It is not always easy for me to sit down and just start typing. The desire is always there, however. To make pen and paper meet is always a bit trickier. But the catharsis of spilling out into the world your own unique perspective is the end. The process of finding words for the perspective is the means.

I struggle with my life. The whole thing. Coping, learning, moving on. I can say without a hint of doubt that failure comes naturally to me. But in the same breath I will tell anyone that as many times as I have been knocked down, I get up faster with each time. When it's time to get the fuck up I can find that catalyst within myself that makes me not want to give up. With the kinetic energy of a moving fist, actually. Admitting defeat is cowardice, and cowardice is easy to find these days. There is a song that goes, "if you're gonna be dumb, you have to be tough." Well I say it is no different for those that are smart. You have to be tough regardless. If you are not progress comes slow--if at all--and opportunities pass you by. I have a high locus of control over my fate. I believe these things.

Every day I see and interact with people who are just along for the ride when they go through their lives. They are not perfectly content, not typically, and they appear subdued in their intensity. I can look someone in the eyes and see if there is something going on there. Most I see rarely hold that edge-of-a-knife characteristic. It is more along the lines of sleepiness, slightly fuzzy as if out of focus, or even helpless bewilderment and confusion. But some give off energy, almost, where most just simply suck it in like a black hole. Hawking radiation as a metaphor for describing the intense intelligence I occasionally find there, has me grinning. The description of this quality really fits because it is equally difficult to ascertain and describe and prove.

And it is not that I cannot sympathize with them, because I honestly do. I can completely understand why someone would rather relax and not push themselves hard as they build their lives into the nest of comfort and safety we all desire. I just do not believe that it is the best way to get the things you want for yourself or for those that depend on you. It is an uncomfortable thing for me to think about, that I might be just like everyone else slowing down to look at a car accident--being simple witnesses to the events surrounding them. I do not want to be the traffic. I really want to be the car accident, and not in the narcisstic meaning. It holds so much meaning to be doing things and not watching them happen, remarking on it, and forgetting it (possibly forever) immediately after.

I also struggle with long term effects of the drugs and treatments I was exposed to as a child. I cannot complain about this because they were only a means to an end: me not dying from bone marrow expansion destroying my bone structure. This would be slow and incomprehendably painful and I am thankful that never happened. The difficulty I describe has more to do with the additional barriers I have to negotiate every day. Enlarged heart, difficulty breathing, and a resultant poor circulation that inhibits cognitive function, eye function (as a result information coding and decoding partially compromised), muscular function, senses, digestive function. All of these things are, albeit minimally compared to how bad it COULD be, impaired and not at their full potential. It is important to state that I do not think of this as an excuse in any format. I am fortunate to be as capable as I am. But that it is real, and, difficult to convey to other people, I rarely discuss it, like my having had cancer at all. I have always just ignored that and if it ever does get mentioned I refer to it flippantly and nonchalantly, brushing it off as "no big deal, it is in the past." I more recently became of the impression that your history is a big part of you and should never be ignored. Especially when it encompassed 6 years out of a limited and highly variable lifetime.

I know those things to be true based on empirical testing I have done over time. I am an analyzer by nature. I am also a do-it-yourself-er by nature. I experiment. I test. I validate. I disprove tihngs. I have had glimpses of the issues being temporarily alleviated, mitigated, even removed. But these were only passing moments of extreme relief. I spend a large amount of energy and consideration trying to recreate the times when I was able to lessen these "barriers" to my being connected to the world around me, and with varying amounts of success. But I am stubbornly comitted to such things, and I will probably never stop chasing that dragon.

Actually opening myself up is the only way to come to terms with who I am. I think that I have only been trying to open up and that does not do as much good as saying even the things you do not want to admit about yourself. This is the only way I will ever accept who I am, so that I can be who I want to be.

Anyone care to come along for the ride?