A Week of Setbacks

It’s been a week of setbacks.  Actually, two weeks. Two weeks ago I joined Match.com and spent nearly a full week checking, searching, emailing… and totally striking out.  I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy, sure-fire thing.  What I didn’t know was what a complete flop it would be.  Something about my situation or something I put in my profile must be a giant red-flag that says “DO NOT TOUCH.”  Then, in almost sort of a really bad karma kind of way, I got a kidney stone.  As if I needed any more trouble in my life!

The kidney stone is still there.  I’m on day 4 now.  They’re estimating from a CAT scan that it’s a 3mm stone. 5mm is the size at which you have a 50:50 chance of passing it on your own.  So I’ve got better than average odds—oh, yay!  They say it’s worse than giving birth—they, including women who’ve given birth, BTW.  I know something about the 1-10 standardized pain scale because I helped my mom when she was struggling with cancer.  10 is supposed to be the greatest pain you can imagine; I believe they say that at 10, you pass out with the pain.  I’m guessing I got to 8.  At any rate, I reached a point where all I could do was cry out “Oh my god. Oh my god.”  I was a total spectacle at the ER.  I was beyond being able to care what I looked like.  It was like having a big knife stuck in my stomach.    

Healing

Week 7.  Healing.  That title just popped into my head.  Why?  I feel wounded, but I guess this is progress.  Before, I felt dead.  Like something, somebody, had died.  I guess it wasn’t me ’cause here I am, writing.  Life goes on.

I thought our separation was going to an amicable one.  It was going to be hard, there were some extremely scary unknowns, there would be battles with feelings of guilt and shame.  But it had to be done, and even if my wife and I had a hard time talking about it, we had–at the therapist’s office anyway.  I had a pretty good idea that my wife wouldn’t really understand, and wouldn’t be sympathetic to my feelings.  I was worried about judgment and rejection by the kids, about anger and condemnation from my wife…   But I had therapists saying do what you have to do, you’ll get through it, you’re getting all worked up over stuff you can’t predict….

It’s just been way worse than I’d imagined.    

Abnormality and Disability

Up early again—woke at 5:00, gave up and got out of bed at 6:00.  Feels pretty messed up when you can’t even sleep.  And I was up till midnight again too.  Am I that messed up?  It’s been a month now since I moved out.

I guess I get to be a little messed up.  I suppose it wouldn’t be normal if I weren’t.  Normal…  I’m tempted to remark “Who needs it?”,  “Who wants to be?” Personally, I’m very glad I’m different.  I’m different enough to have lived a pretty interesting life, and I think I’ve run into more than the usual incidence of non-normal people.  Spices up my life.  But I’m cognizant that it often comes with a price.  Probably my estrangement from my wife and kids is a case in point.  But I don’t feel that abnormal.  I mean, I have a bona fide diagnosis, but if you had to pick a diagnosis to live with, AD/HD, if under control, is not such a bad one.  In fact, I think it usually comes with some up sides that are pretty nice.  But that’s a subject for another piece.  It really doesn’t dominate my life or even concern me that much.  Looking around me, I can see that I’m one of the lucky ones.   

The Early Bird

5:30 a.m.  A fitting place to start.  See, my life’s pretty whacked out right now.  Maybe it always was.  I used to show up at my parents’ bedside about this time of day and ask them what’s for breakfast.  That’s the story anyway.  At any rate, I ended up figuring out how to climb up on the counter to get a box of Cheerios down from the cupboard.  Then I’d slowly eat them while sitting on the heater register.  I’d watch the street lights go out in various neighborhoods across the valley 1 to 3 miles away.  It was cozy, and I was alone there, comfortable and alone in my own world, lost in my own thoughts.  No hurry.  No worries.

Much the same as this morning, only there are considerably more worries and angst now.  But I’ll skip the details for the time being.  It may all sound familiar to lots of other people, but it’s all very new and disorienting to me: recently separated, two kids (college and Jr. High), living in a new place.  I was married 20 years; I think that’s important to mention right away.  I’ll also mention that there was nobody else involved, no affair, no cheating—although I actually don’t think that’s so important.  Or at least in my case it wasn’t.  Oh, I was tempted—many times.  Probably it was only my own social ineptitude that “saved” me.  Only it didn’t save me.  Our marriage wasn’t saved, and I wasn’t saved.  Nobody was saved.  And in the end, what matters is the relationship.  Sexual and emotional infidelity are only a symptom of the real problems I figure.  

Slow Down!

by Trapped Ape

Pedestrian Fatality Probabilities vs. Vehicle Speed

6:00 a.m. Sunday morning. It’s so painful to move that it took me a full two minutes to slide out of bed and shuffle over to the bathroom. I’ve developed a technique where I use the weight of my arms to turn me onto my side, then verrry slooowly let gravity bring my knees to the floor, then stand up.  The pain pill has worn off and, just for good measure, left me with a bad headache and a stomach ache. I’m hoping to avoid the nausea that it progressed to yesterday morning. Maybe if I eat a little? I’m not hungry.

It’s “just” a cracked rib. If I weren’t so compulsively logical, I’d call it my punishment. I was going too fast—I’ll grant you that. Yes, I have to admit my guilt I guess. This time I don’t even get to claim “At least I was having fun.” I was late to a lunch date with my wife. Too wrapped up with my video editing on the computer: “Oops! Gotta go!” Luckily, I was doing 20, not 40.  Doesn’t sound so fast? Well, the odds of a pedestrian being killed if hit by a car at 20 mph are 15%. Double that to 40, it jumps all the way up to 85%.  At 40, it takes 120 feet to stop—40 feet for reaction time and 80 feet for actually stopping.  At 40mph, the reaction time distance is twice that of 20 mph, but braking distance goes up exponentially: 4 times greater.