Tag Archives: love

The sickbed diaries IV

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Still not a lot going on in the realms of sleep. I manage a short nap at 3ish but that’s about it. It’s at this point the feeling of fraud begins to creep up. Truth is, I’ve never really been ill, I’ve never broken anything (present issues excepted) and never been operated upon (see above). I had acute appendicitis once, but was so disgusted by the hospital I ended up in, my body realised that it was in more danger being operated on than by being left alone … I recovered by myself. When I was waiting for my discharge stuff, someone came in and started to wheel me out. I asked what they were doing. Taking you to theatre, they replied. I believe I was scrupulously polite in telling them to leave me the fuck alone. But that’s another story, for another day …

I’ve had none of the anaesthesia hangover that I hear tell of, no being off my food, no depression, no headache … no tiredness (well, not that isn’t directly applicable to not sleeping, anyhoo). I have people asking what they can do for me, and the only answer is nothing, really. I need just as much company as usual … though, to be fair, I could do with someone getting the rice out of the cupboard …

Perhaps it’s simply that I’ve used up my current illness quota with the PD. And it’s much on my mind. So much so tht yesterday I began to write about it. Not in a blogging sort of way, but more in a ‘here’s a book on PD for you’ sort of way. I can’t decide on a format, however. If I back to when I was being diagnosed, what would I have appreciated? A Very Short Introduction to PD? A more memoir/novel/autobiography sort of thing? Perhaps a biography … my life in Pete … hmm. What to write, what to write …

And then there’s the thorny issue of how to sell it. I already have what I think is a really strong kids’ book and a novel which is nearing first draft completion which I have no clue how to deal with …

Oh! Pain! Ok, more of a twinge – but is this good, or bad? Does it indicate healing, or something else entirely?

The thing with pain, whether it is emotional or physical, is that it tells us we’re alive. Sometimes we keep scratching at the same wound because we’re scared that if we don’t, we’ll forget how to feel – how to feel pleasure, how to feel love.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

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Sometimes, just sometimes, you find succour in the most unexpected of places. The place you feel least likely to discover anything positive, anything good, anything real. And yet there it lies. Over the past few days I’ve been having what can only be described as a long dark night of the soul … except that I’ve felt a little like John the Baptist, 40 days and 40 nights, living off locusts and honey, only for my head to be chopped off when I emerge (and yes, there was a gap … but hey). I have talked with several friends, at length, about my own state, and my reasons for being in it. It has been hard to accept that time flows in only one direction,and that’s out of us. As our world becomes more complicated we seek to stem the flow through all manner of techniques and tricks. In the end, however, is the end. We must decide how to fill that time.
Because the feeling of waste will come to us all, and we must ask ourselves whether we were nourished by the greatest gifts we could find in our grasp, or whether we simply grasped. I have long been grasping, lunging, grabbing, ripping whatever I could from whatever tree or bush which was within range, and indiscriminately eating and wasting what I picked. I have done so fueled by a sense of injustice and rage against the fates which have decreed that I shall gradually lose what is my greatest asset, the force of my personality.
Over time, PD will strip me of my physical prowess, destroying those Petes for whom physicality was the thing. Pete the guitar player, the sound engineer, the painter and decorator, the athlete (work with me here), the cricketer, the educator, the lover, the writer … all of these will gradually fade until there’s no physical personality left. All that I’ll have is my brain, and whatever love I have been able to muster – love of my daughter, perhaps, as well as that of some future lover.
It is there for the taking, this I know full well. All I need do is ditch my fear, be open, and stop wondering what that patch of grass is like over there. The irony is two-fold. Firstly, to fully realise my own happiness I need do no more than focus on somebody else. Secondly, that I have come to this realisation because of the utter desolation of one relationship. The truth of the matter is that there are relationships in which the partners are never more than adventurers, partners in crime, necessary sufferers of each others’ fuck-ups, foibles and frailties. Both suffer from the behaviour, witting or unwitting, voluntary or not, of the other. And both come out the other end howling with pain and injustice. But the door has been opened. And, if you let it, the good shit can shine in.
In such a situation, it is incumbent on both parties to have the good grace to say au revoir, it was (mostly) great, but it was never forever, and the best of luck with your search for peace and personal fulfillment. This I can do. I am jealous, yes, but only of the ability to let the past go and to surrender to the future. You deserve all the love the world can give you, Cathy. Good luck.