So, there were parties…
on New Years Eves past…
And all very accommodating to my single disability at the time…(I was ambulatory on Canadian crutches) either at my house or a friends house. The drinks were better at my friends house, and the games more risque…and the friends a little more eclectic…but they tried hard to be the same type of party at two different locations. For awhile we traded off yearly.
I don’t regret drinking my first rum and coke when I was fifteen, but it was a little out of proportion, so the stairs proved interesting…
By the time I was twenty one, my parent permitted some alcohol and kindly went away from our home for most of the night, and cousins, friends from high school, friends from college, all met, some for the first time….and all got along. That’s unusual because they were from pretty different backrounds…but they all were either street smart, book smart or both, and much humor was passed around…I think they had their best fun picking on me (as a person, which is fine by me…this was not P+L’ing at my impairment)
My friends were acclimated enough to me to get and pour their own sodas and/or drinks. (snacks were strategically set out, or placed all at one spot. ) The kitchen table was pulled, and clumsy if enthusiastic dancing happened…good music played , word games, conversation…and no one ever got overdrunk, that condition where people yell a lot, get demanding, get nasty…The only loud thing was the laughing…I don’t remember if I ever got a noise complaint…maybe only once in several years.
Was I lazy? Sure. Did I have more time to have fun because others did the legwork? Also yes.
And looking back, I’ve gone to some staged New Year’s parties with some strangers in public venues…that I didn’t like as much, even with better music, drinks, food. Because some strangers in the crowd would give me “that look.” that fellow readers with disabilities know very much. It’s either pity, or worse, revulsion, or the point and giggle that is just immature. I said “some” because other able strangers simply treat one as a person right from the start, and might become friends.
But the ones limited to friends were “safer” emotionally, because the point and stare element just wasn’t there.
Since alcohol doesn’t mix safely with some medications, I’m having a quiet evening with sparkling cider and some old TV or movies…
But with next year being my 50th birthday in November…
Maybe I’ve got one more of those parties to give….
Hope so.
Fate is personal property. Hold on to it.
I suppose earlier in my life it was okay to yak and angst angst angst about how other people’s characteristics and interactions adversely affected my life.
This’ll be a short one, but as 2010 wraps…
Ten to twenty years ago, I think that was something I needed to do, to bring these things to light. I had to stand up for myself, make boundaries and explain something of why these boundaries needed to be established.
Now, sneaking up on fifty ( ‘What fresh hell is this?’) Fifty? My Gawd….
At fifty, you have to own your own life. You can still admit these things affect you, either privately, pubically, in therapy, or print or stage or screen or blog… but good grief, you’re a whole entire person on your own now.
I’ve been trying, particularly in the past year, to pull away from the anguish producing questions my past is so full of…to leave them alone, because to some extent I’ve finished with them. (And also because my *present* is fairly situationally *screamingly f-d up* so I need to concentrate on fixing the now.)
I don’t *need* the answers to those questions anymore because I think I’ve got them. And I don’t have this persistent jones I used to have, the need to hold the creators of those questions accountable, to intellectually pin them to a wall and force them to admit that my perception of the ‘truth’ of a given past has some merit, even if they disagree with it. It’s ok if I never have those conversations.
I still have unresolved food addiction issues and other shortcomings I have a plan to address…but I believe I’ll have more space on my skull’s hard drive to deal with those two remaining troubling issues, since I’ve been able to archive a great many files about other stuff.
Don’t give too much control to the people and days and times that caused you pain. Don’t let those things make up too much of your personal patchwork.
Coming up
2011 could be better or worse than 2010. The point is to meet it head on.
Excersizing restraint
So, I have these sitting aerobics DVD’s that I’m doing…they really do push the heart rate up, slowly a bit at a time…The set will be really useful once I start adding in the strengnth training set. I’m only up to twenty minutes twice a week tho, and I need to add in that other day before they will really be of great benefit.
The woman who created these discs directed them specifically at people who need to lose 100 lbs or more, but have mobility or pain issues with standing exersise. She is great at her job. A certified fitness trainer and mildly heavyset herself..this should be all good right? Well, it’s not. She has all this encouragetalk like they all do…sprinkled with politically correct body positive ‘affirmations.’ I’ve hated all that business since it came into general discussion of or views about mental or physical impairment…so off that volume goes. Eventually I’m going to have to diagram the positions count the reps and not use the DVD’s themselves to excersize altogether, because even her constantly smiling face drives me insane, for no particular reason…
It’s good to be doing this, it appears to be helping but discussion about being happy at my particular body differences should at least wait until I’m out of my ‘ gym.’
After about four rounds of this, I’ve had to turn the sound off. and just do the reps as I see them.
Checkups
One more long move. Hoping to make it till mid march before I do that.
My new gastro had my symptoms explained to her and prescribed a medicine that is helping a bit. (I have all these separate meds for this condition that each address a different symptom.
She also told it to me straight, that there was no cure for something that has gone on as long as this has…in other words, amelioration, improvement but not an end…she also agreed with me that the chemo probably exacerbated the problem up to a certain level, and the gall bladder removal did so again…and now it is slowly backing down with the addition of two new meds since my gall bladder did that hasty emergency surgery exit in early 2009
Midlife And Treachery 
