I can't sleep -- stunner. There is so much spinning in my head, it's really ridiculous. Dad's still in the hospital, Kristin is looking at houses as I sit here 1,200 miles away, and I feel like inspiration is being sucked out of me every second of the day while I sit in the hospital for really no damn good reason other than making sure they don't kill the big man. It's especially fun considering I was in the hospital exactly a year ago myself -- HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!
After going through all of this with Dad, I'm starting to have a hard time with the whole "wow, this puts everything into perspective" cliche that comes out of tragedy. I hope and pray that for other people who need it, a lesson comes out of this, but to me it is what it is. It doesn't put anything into perspective, besides teaching me to never have surgery at Lakeland Regional Medical Center.
Perspective has never been what I've needed through all of this. Loss, or the threat of loss, should never put things into perspective....because what does that even mean? If this kind of thing prompts you to want to change the way you do things, the way you appreciate people, or keep them in your life, then, you have the problem, and had it long before anyone stepped foot into a hospital.
Everybody knows that when you tear it all down it's about yourself. Deep down I believe everybody knows that, or feels that somewhere in their soul. Even when I was swept up into working all of the time, I carried with me the knowledge that it could all go away in a breath. I used to sit in the grass on sunny Saturday afternoons when I worked with the kids, and just see the un-filtered joy on their faces. On the same face, a minute later, the unimaginable struggle that kids with special needs go through shows up. That's real suffering, yet through it all, these kids smiled and laughed a lot more often than anyone else I spent time with any given week.
Anyways, I beat the shit out of myself about a lot of this. How could I have been so stupid to lose focus, etc...but I never really did. I don't want to have the depression and everything be a line of demarcation...like, on this side, the post-hospitalization side, is the good Kev, and before that I was total shit. It's not true. I got sick, just as someone who broke a limb and had part of their life altered for an extended period of time. My thoughts we altered...and not they're back, only with the appreciation for life, and how I truly revel in it most days.
The Kevin that existed before the spring of 2008 loved the hell out of life too though....I'm still trying to wrap my head around how I can be better with life and not let change overwhelm me - I think that's IT. I think I need a life coach or something, because I've always been a happy person, passionate, and good-natured....Change has always thrown me off the track. This isn't a massive crisis of faith, where I was miserable to people, and zombied my way through every day of my life. On the contrary, I tried hard, every day, to laugh and not take shit too seriously. Sometimes at inappropriate times. But I have passions, and they were the same passions I had pre-crisis. I love the same things I loved before, and the same people who I loved before.
I went off the rails and I still have fears and on bad days visulaize not being part of this world -- but I have the tools to flush that out of my head nearly immediately. None of my fears involve the fear of eventual regret though, and that's what I've been thinking a lot about with my Dad. Mortality is a mother fucker!
I think about how if the worst-case scenario happened, there's nothing I would regret in regards to my Dad...I don't feel like I have I have any unfinished business. When you live for the moment, and in the NOW, there isn't regret. It's just peaceful, and amazing. The funnest thing about it though? You get to let the judgment and negativity of others wash over you, and sometimes to view it as an observer is funny as hell. It's frustrating, but, we aren't here to correct other people and set them on the right path -- we can only be true to ourselves. "There but for the grace of God go I."
No comments:
Post a Comment