The line between acceptance and giving up.

I really wish I had answers for this...

Wow there are so many things I want to talk about in this post that I don't know where to begin.  Perhaps with a story...

I once had a friend who was functioning in society fairly well but clearly had some difficulty maintaining a consistent approach to her life.  Then she received her diagnosis and suddenly everything became worse.  She began to embody and experience all the worst symptoms of her illness.  Her attempts to lead a normal life fell by the wayside as she quite tangibly embraced her diagnosis.  I am not judging her.  I know it had always been hard.

Back in 2009 I received a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and in view of my friend's experience I decided not to research FMS and not to read any kind of list of symptoms.  I was vehemently opposed to "embracing the diagnosis".  So instead of reading the symptoms I listed the things I was experiencing and then investigated to see if they were FMS related.
Pain - Check
Fatigue - Check
Vertigo - Check
Poor balance - Check
Digestion issues - Check
Skin sensitivities - Check
Strange over the top startle/shock response - no check?
Trouble Swallowing - no check?
Clumsiness - Check
I just didn't want to subliminally convince myself to develop more problems than I already had.  I think this was probably a stupid approach but I was quite determined at the time.

Of course time passes, and things started to get worse, and I began to have to accept that I really couldn't ignore these problems.  This led to me wanting to find my community and wanting to relate to other people who really understood what was going on.  Those of you who know me personally know that I am a curious person and that I process and assimilate information very easily and really without trying.  So naturally the idea that I could not be educated about FMS became even more ridiculous when I reached out to others.

Still, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I had some strange delusion that coming home to Australia would make everything better...  somewhere in my mind I saw myself here (in Oz) as the same person I was who left here in 1999.  I'm not.

Please note that this blog is the product of a crappy, exhausted, painful day.  It isn't always like this and I don't always feel this bad.

I think my twisted idea of not learning so as not to embrace etc was just one form of denial, the whole 'healthy when I come home' thing was another...  I also think that my body is demanding that I accept what's going on and I think I am starting to do that.  (All this blogging helps BTW).  But there is a side effect of acceptance.

When I accept that I need help, in any form, I can relax a little from the constant battle to either hide my problems or "tough it out" and I now wonder if that was what I was seeing in my friend all those years ago.  Which makes me wonder if it is a good thing at all?

This morning I drove The Boy to the train station (he is off back up the coast to go to his school formal (the prom for my North American friends)) and I got out of the car and yelped in pain as my back reacted very badly to the change from being seated to standing.  I waited a few moments for the worst of the pain to pass and for the rest of my body to acclimate to standing.  Then carefully and tentatively I started to walk using my walking stick.  By now The Boy was 30 feet away from the car on the way into the train station.  He stopped and waited a bit and teased me about looking like an old grandma (not that I don't have many friends younger than I who have grand children) and then he asked me an interesting question.  He asked if I use the cane so that people don't bump into me.  It made me think about all the reasons I use the cane... sometimes... and I don't always use it... but it also made me think of the visual message that using it sends to others and the fact that it does have a supplementary benefit of making people steer clear.  I don't cope well with being bumped, my balance is terrible, every contact with my body hurts, if I fall it is excruciating (and I do fall too often), and I have anxiety about people, so I have a HUGE personal space.  The walking stick gives me more room and that is a good thing.  But it also allows me to let my weakness show and that is something I have avoided doing for my entire life.  Remember I was raised by a super stoic...

I guess I have rambled on long enough in this blog but I could go on for a long time yet if I let myself...  I guess I am just wondering how closely giving up or giving in is related to acceptance...

I read a really interesting little book last year by Richard Bach, the bloke who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, it was called 'Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah' and it was non religiously spiritual, full of really amazing messages about life the universe and everything... not the kind of thing I usually read but it had, LITERALLY, thrown itself into my path, it turned up in my car with no known source.  The salient point here is that the book began with a long 'hand written' list about The Master and a parable that related to creatures that lived on the bottom of a crystal river and clung to the rocks as the raging current ran over them until one creature released his/her grip on the bottom and was swept on by the current.  This creature met other creatures whose lives were different and experienced adventures and growth that clinging to the river bottom could never have provided...  It was a great read which unfortunately I left behind in the US.  I am that creature.  I have thrown myself on the mercy of the current.

In spite of this I am still struggling with these issues...  Is letting your pain show because you are becoming more accepting tantamount to giving up the fight?  How much of the fight was really about maintaining my identity as a healthy vital person?  How much of the fight was really about my ego and about what other people think?  How much of the fight was really about trying to cling to the bottom like all the other creatures?

11.11.11 - War, Gough, Occupy, Cosmic Opportunism

I don't support war with the sole exception of self-defense.  World War 1, The Great War, was not our war as Australians and yet at the time our society was so culturally and legally tied to The British Empire that Australians felt it was their war.  On this day 93 years ago the Armistice was signed and WW1 ended.  This image I borrowed from Wikipedia depicts the cover of the NYT on Nov 11 1918.

One of my Grandfathers was a WW1 veteran.  A country boy from Narrabri he was at Gallipoli (an honour that carries great kudos in Australia), actually he was there only very briefly.  He had contracted a non-specific venereal disease in Cairo and was evacuated from Gallipoli to a hospital ship and sent home.  An ignominious story that heavily contradicts the family legend.  My other Grandfather was a trade union leader, Secretary of the Boiler Maker's Union, Member of the NSW Upper House in the famous Jack Lang Labor Government, in the Official Stand at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and he was imprisoned during WW1 for actively protesting with his Unionists against conscription.  (He was English by birth having grown up in the destitute suburbs of Leeds in Yorkshire.)  Anyone hazard a guess whose legacy I want to carry?

On November the 11th 1975 the then Governer-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Gough Whitlam Labor Government, creating the greatest controversy and the most dramatic event in Australian political history.  Here I really wish I could insert a clip showing the incredible Robyn Archer singing her song "The Jubilee Cakewalk" but you are going to have to put up with my (probably inaccurate) 30 year old memory of the lyrics...  My apologies to Robyn Archer for any errors, it has been a VERY long time since I heard anyone other than me sing the song.

Well the Queen is having a Jubilee and I don't begrudge her that.

But when I think of what her power did to my country I don't feel like raising my hat

When a white-haired old bugger name of Sir John Kerr

Sacked the Labor Government in the name of her

Old money bags Fraser refused supply and the Governor-General waved bye bye

To socialism, the Governor-General waved bye bye.

I've very fond memories of the Queen she's one of the few I've seen

As an antipodean child of nine I was taken to the race track made to stand in line

Now it was very hot and I had cause to faint

She's a benevolent monarch it's not her fault it ain't

But if our democracy is in the political shit she's not responsible for it

Or is she?  She's not responsible for it.

Now she's given him a title, the Companion of Honour is he.

But anything of honour in the things that he did would be very difficult to see

I didn't set out to call the Queen a creep but you can tell a lady by the companions she keeps

And if our democracy is in the political shit she's not responsible for it

Or is she?  She's not responsible for it.

Well I voted once and I voted twice but majority vote melted away like ice

Old money bags Fraser refused supply and the Governor-General waved bye bye

To socialism, the Governor-General waved bye bye he caused a schism 

The Governor-General said exactly what I'd like to say to him

Bye bye Governor-General, Bye Bye.

I was only a kid when this happened... I still remember exactly where I was when I found out.  I was on a bus outside the Registry Office between Hyde Park and St Mary's Cathedral and my friend Miranda told me the news.

Today has been declared an international worldwide Occupy the Streets day of demonstration but there doesn't seem to be much going on here in Sydney.  There is an informal discussion this afternoon and I am considering attending (except I am saving my precious limited energy and endurance for going out later tonight and I don't think I can do both.)

Still in acknowledgment of my support of the Occupy movement I wrote the following comment on the Occupy Sydney Website.

How can we not support the Occupy Movement?
I believe there is a gross inequity in the distribution of wealth in our society. I watch the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and I know it is wrong.
The global recession has caused corporations to tighten their belts (read; get more work out of less people under lower standard working conditions) and yet the very top of the tree continues to reap huge profits. Government doesn’t help because their principle concern is always getting re-elected and the top of the tree has the power to heavily influence an election.
If I don’t stand up to be counted I have no right to complain and I think we should be complaining LOUD AND LONG!
How can we not support the Occupy movement? It is OUR movement after all. 

Finally, a queenie little chap on TV told me that today is cosmically significant and so it is a good time to put out into the universe the positive wishes for what you want to attract so here is my wish list (in deference to Mildred Ratched I am wishing BIG)

• I want the world to be happier, healthier, and wealthier (read - wealth shared more fairly)
• I want war and religion to get off the center of the stage (Play John Lennon's Imagine to express my thoughts on this matter)
• I want my health back 
• I want to love and to be loved in return
• I want a safe comfortable environment in which to live long-term
• I want to not have as many things to worry about
• I want many varied opportunities for laughter
• I want to spend time with interesting, caring, socially conscious people
• I want you all to have your wishes come true too.

I am hoping to post this as close to the 11th hour on this the 11th day of the 11th month in the 11th year... I who was born on the 29th (11) for whom 11 has always been my favourite and most lucky number.  

Happy elevenses to you and yours - may the magic be real!

Should I write this? (and the sequel Should I Post This?)

I'm not sure if I want this going out into the galaxy of infinite internet information...  it might be resigned to life as a draft... (not that very many people read my blog anyway)...  BUT...

I had an unusual experience this morning.  I woke from a dream in which I had found a woman attractive.  This probably doesn't sound too extraordinary but it is for me.

The dream was hazy, as they are; it didn't make very much sense, as they don't; and it disappeared all too quickly from my mind, as they do.  I had watched a woman in jeans and a western shirt (she could have been any of those very cute cowgirls at the gay rodeo in Denver) run back across a corral towards me.  She sat down beside me - I don't know who she was and she isn't familiar to my conscious mind, but in the dream I knew her, slightly - she turned towards me, very close - her face no more than 8 inches from mine - and she smiled and her eyes twinkled.  I said, "you have beautiful eyes".  For a moment something electric flashed between us, something that felt strangely like attraction, and she looked down, bashfully and mumbled "Thank you".  Then I woke up.  (I bet you thought we were going to kiss - my dreams aren't that raunchy!)

It isn't very noteworthy I know.  I suppose other people have lots of dreams like this.  I don't.  I don't dream about finding people attractive and I don't dream about falling in love, well not subconsciously anyway.  Attraction, for me, is so rarely visually stimulated.  It always (OK there was one exception back in my mid 20's and you know who you are!) begins with some kind of mental and emotional "CLICK".  I don't lust after attractive strangers or faces on a screen.  The physical attraction needs to support the emotional and intellectual - but it doesn't lead.

This story could go two ways here, I am sorely tempted to start down the "poor me" track (my self esteem is in the toilet, overweight, not very interesting, I walk like a 90 year old) - think I'm gonna eat worms! OR I could swing into "Positive Thinking" mode, which I myself seriously questioned in a blog the other day, and hypocritically decide to put my wishes "out into the universe".

So what do I want?  I would like to meet a woman who makes me laugh and who laughs at my half-witticisms, she MUST be bright, she doesn't need to be beautiful but it is important that something in her look appeals to me, sparkling eyes are a good start!  Not too screwed up is a learned requirement (but that's another story).  It doesn't seem too much to ask, does it?  Oh yeah, one last thing, I want her to think I am fabulous - (some degree of disassociation from reality might be an asset with this).

I guess she isn't going to turn up inside the house so I better go out and do something.  It is a glorious day in Sydney the options are limitless!

I am really bad at making social things happen, just a dash of social anxiety makes it stressful.  So any thoughts would be gratefully appreciated.