Legs Twelve

Remember this blog right here, wherein I talked about the pair of ulcers I had on my legs?

Time for an update - and it's good news.

Sheldon (the painful, annoying blemish on my inner right ankle) has been closed and healed for a long while. The leg still bears the scar - it was a savage wound after all. Now, though, the primary discomfort that leg causes me is through the arthritis in the joints.

Lefty, though; Lefty, who I have had since almost 2010 - Lefty has been a constant source of piss-off and pain. Draining. Ugly. Requiring constant wrapping and pressure.

Up until earlier this week.

Lefty isn't an ulcer, now. He's not a wound. Now, he is considered a Previous Wound Site.

This means that, in a couple weeks, my left leg won't need to be bandaged up to the knee; it will have removable compression, the kind that comes off whenever I like.

It is a very, very odd feeling to think that something that has affected me for so long will soon be technically over. It will feel alien, I know, to lay in bed and not feel the sheets cling to compression bandaging. To be able to reach down and touch the back of my calf, without feeling elastic and cotton in the way.

The day I am told that I no longer need that compression, I may just break down in tears.

I can't even tell you how much better this will make my life.

It's all thanks to the NHS. Without them I would be in serious and severe debt or worse - just ignoring the problem until it goes away. I've seen what happens if you ignore a venous ulcer. It spreads. Then you get sepsis and they take off your leg.

I can't thank the medical staff who have treated me enough. First at Garfield Surgery, now sadly closed - then at Tower House Surgery. The many doctors and even more nurses that have helped me not only with Lefty and Sheldon, but also with the various and sundry other conditions I suffer from.

Onwards and upwards, right?

I'll post a picture sooner or later.

1 of 7 - Take Our Own Medicine

(This is the first of an attempt to write a blog post a day for an entire week! What am I, a masochist!?)

Most people are absolutely overflowing with good advice, aren't they?

We've all lived lives. We've been in situations that aren't great or ideal. We've dealt with scenarios that test us, that lead to suffering (or joy), and we've learned lessons from them. We're filled with knowledge on how to survive the modern world, and it's advice we should hand out to those that need it.

Like I could probably tell you a few good ways to eat on a budget, or ways to get the most out of a stay in a hotel. Other people I know can give you killer tips on contouring your face or cooking a full roast dinner or refitting an entire BMW engine.

When it comes to personal advice however - on relationships, on doubts, on regrets, on living life - why are we so bad at taking our own advice?

We know we shouldn't do the thing. When others do the thing, we tell them - hey, maybe not do the thing. If someone does the thing in a movie, we laugh. How could they be so dumb as to do the thing? I'd NEVER do the thing.

Then...we do the thing.

But! But it's different for us, isn't it? Different circumstances, because...

And there it is. The excuse. The complexity.

When we look at someone else's life - either by the medium of their telling us or through our own observation - we don't see everything. We see a snapshot, a slice. What seems so obvious to us as we look at their lives is in actual fact not as easy as one would assume, which is what we find when it comes to applying our advice to own situation.

The thing is... sometimes we use those complexities as excuses.

It's HARD to cut certain things or people out of one's life. I know this. Even if we kind of suspect they are bad for us - hell, even if we 100% know objectively they are AWFUL for us - it's hard to drop the hammer forever. That's before we consider any further issues; we're still friends with this person's second cousin, that would be awkward. How am I going to attend all those fun crack house parties if I don't smoke crack any more?

...but here's the thing...we get so used to making those excuses that we end up just letting the situation continue, long after we would actually step in and act on our friend's behalf if they were in the same situation.

It's easier to suffer than it is to watch suffering. Like I know this for a fact. I've seen other people struggling with similar problems to me and it hurts. How often have we said we'd take someone else's suffering if we could? Because we can deal with it, we know we can. We're strong. We can take on the world, even if we hate watching our friends do the same.

Even if our friends hate watching us do the same. To the point that they give us advice. That they urge us to listen. That they tell us that they know it is hard but...

That's the point. It IS hard. We all have to do hard things in our lives. Even if we know it is for our own good, that doesn't make it any easier - nor any less necessary. It just requires a shift of thinking. We start with the baseline of: It is hard so I will find ways to cope with not doing it.

Really, it is in our best interest to shift to: It is going to be hard but I must do it and so I will find ways to cope with the result.

Let's start taking our own advice, people. Toxicity is profligate in our lives and in the world around us - but we don't have to suffer all of it. Do better for ourselves before we tell others what they should be doing.

Everyone being happier, healthier and more secure is never a bad thing.

I Am Sometimes Someone Else

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry," said Bruce Banner, and he was right.

Note: Bruce Banner said that. Not the Hulk. Not the raging alter-ego, the Hyde to his Jeckyll. The separation is distinct, one put there deliberately and constantly.

Those who know me, know I suffer from a variety of health issues. Pain, discomfort, a lot of frustrating bullshit. It's not ideal but I try and keep my shit together most of the time - and I like to think that, most of the time, I succeed.

There are times, though...

My dad had a hell of a temper. When he got angry he was truly a sight to behold. It didn't happen often - I mean he had his moments of frustration, but the true meltdowns of epic rage, those were once-a-decade visions of disasterous glory. He never hit me or my mother, never threatened to - but by god, did he have the potential to get angry.

His anger scared me as a kid. Like, it gave me an aversion to conflict that caused me trouble throughout the entirety of my childhood, way into my teenage years, until the age of 16 when I finally realised that - every now and then, a line needs to be drawn.

Even so. Anger, frustration, drama, overt hostility - I am still averse to it. It's why soap operas bother me, and reality television - half of the content is just people being shit to each other. That bothers me, because they're not doing it for any good reason. They're not standing up for anyone's rights, or putting anyone in their right place, or correcting a wrong. They're just being assholes.

I don't like who I am when I don't have my shit together.

One of the reasons I like music is that it lets me feel all the stuff that one needs to feel, without becoming a slave to it. Like you put on the album and you feel it all. It runs through your entire body and you are a slave to it...and then it stops and you put it away and you can get on with your day.

Personally speaking, I hate the feeling of being angry for a wide cornucopia of reasons.

For one thing I hold myself to quite a high standard of being in control of myself and my things. Knowing where my stuff is, when my appointments are, where I am meant to be and when, what I should be doing at any time. I absolutely detest when I lose something or when I forget something. Being angry makes it easy to lose hold of this kind of stuff.

I also dislike how easy it is for me to get really, really hostile and hurtful when I am angry. Like engaging in a bit of banter is okay, it's like a witty sparring match. When my blood gets hot though - the banter goes. The claws come out. I do not like myself, at all, when I am in that mood - because anyone is a fair target for me.

A third thing I dislike is how angry I get at myself for being angry, which is, yes, a very dumb thing to feel but - hey, anger is irrational. I also feel guilt. Like immediately afterwards, guilt. Sometimes enough that I feel nauseous. I know I am doing something that I am not cool with, and I am not cool with that. Not one bit.

Unfortunately...being ill makes the anger thing happen a lot more than if I wasn't. And for that, I believe I owe pretty much everyone an apology.

I try not to be an asshole unless someone deserves it, but I am painfully aware of the fact that, sometimes, the asshole comes out anyway. I overthink these things for days after the fact, and wonder if I could have just been a little less tired and a little more serene, shit would have been okay.

So I am going on record here:

If I am an asshole to you, I am sorry. I'm not going to make excuses. They are reasons, not excuses. I am sorry for losing my temper, for getting snide, for not wanting to participate or for not getting into the spirit of things.

I try to be cool. I swear. It just doesn't always work.

But that isn't the real me. That's my Hulk, my Wolfman.That's the side of me that is altered, changed.

The real me is actually kinda cool, sometimes.

Promise.

Legs Eleven

WARNING: What follows is a one-man discussion of medical matters, pertaining to me. There are pictures and the pictures are kind of gross.

I'm ill.

I have several things wrong with me. One is a fairly early onset of rheumatoid arthritis, which is essentially one's own immune system attacking one's joint tissue, identifying the tissue as an invasive force. Another is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which is significant scarring of my lungs (in particular the left), which makes it hard to breathe at the best of times and leaves my heart working twice as hard.

These aren't really visible, per se. They're not what one would call visible illnesses. I do HAVE some visible conditions, mind - side effects of the other two.

This is the reason I don't wear shorts.

Those are my legs, clad in the compression bandages that I have on 7 days a week.

The reason they are in compression? Well, there's two reasons; Lefty and Sheldon.

This is Lefty. Lefty is a venous ulcer that sits on the outside of my left ankle. Lefty happened when I had pleurisy, around about 2010.

Leg ulcers like Lefty happen, often, due to high blood pressure. The vein wall gets stretched, allowing some degree of plasma into the tissue of the leg, which increases the chance of blisters, infections and all sorts of other nastiness. (It happens so much more in the lower parts of the leg because of gravity - the g-forces in a roller coaster really hit you as you reach the bottom of the slope and swing back up.)

Lefty has been my constant companion for six years, and he hurts. He hurts quite a lot. He's only exposed for about five minutes twice a week, when the dressing is changed. The picture was taken as aforementioned dressing-change was occuring. He hurts when I have been standing up long enough, when pressure has been put on him, when the air pressure is weird, when I have walked a lot, when I have been sat down too long, when I sneeze, when I crap, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all.

Lefty is a bastard. Lefty, however, looks a lot less problematic than Sheldon.

Sheldon looks like Patient Zero of a zombie outbreak. Sheldon looks like the land mass of the evil continent in a fantasy realm. Sheldon hurts even more than Lefty.

Sheldon has been with me for a lot less time than Lefty has; when you get one ulcer, there is perhaps an 80% chance that you will get another, in the same way as getting a chest infection will almost guarantee you will get another. I have had Sheldon for about six months. He's a lot more superficial than Lefty, which is why he hurts so damn much.

See, while Lefty hurts a lot of the time, it is a rather bearable pain, most of the time. It's a low pulsing throb, like the vague headache you have four days after going to see Slayer - unless agitated. Sheldon, however, still has all his nerve endings - and so Sheldon is a little ball of agony at the slightest provocation. I can take my blood pressure from Sheldon's pulsing, on a bad day.

Sheldon is healing faster, if only because he's more superficial. This contributes to the pain factor, as well. It looks grody, and that grodiness is overgranulation. The skin is healing a little too fast. That is both good and bad, because if it doesn't heal properly, it may lead to further ulcers in the future.

The compression bandages do several things. One is they keep the wounds covered and clean, so they don't get infected. They also provide a minor amount of bump and scrape protection. They absorb any moisture that the ulcers kick out. The primary thing they do, however, is force any plasma and such out of my tissue and back into my venal system, so it can be processed properly. (My piss smells a bit weird because of this.)

So if I grimace a bit, or shift my weight seemingly at random from foot to foot, or lean down to seemingly adjust my socks, then this is why. These two bastards, and the effect they have on my life.

They were dressed a little differently, recently; the dressing was a touch more loose than usual, and because of that, I have slept less in the past four days than most people have in the last 24 hours. I've seen the last three 3ams, and each of them has been a shitty time to be awake and alive.

Right now, though; right now I am feeling a lot better.

I am doing a lot better than I was, and that is down to the nurses, doctors and medical practicitioners that I've seen over the years. Their help has been beyond indispensible. They've been incredible.

The big question though...why Sheldon?

Well, he causes me discomfort; he's consistently not funny; he's abrasive; and he always seems to knock when not wanted. Also it complains when something is in its spot.

Treatment continues.

What Doesn't Kill Me

Fair warning, folks; what follows deals with mental health issues - specifically my own. Yet more specifically, depression, anxiety, and suicide. If these things upset you, or if they make you uncomfortable - either due to their nature or their relevance in my life - then I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

Here would be a good start. It's pretty awesome.

Everyone still reading...we okay? We okay to get real serious?

Okay, now...

For full disclosure: when I was in college at age 18, way back in 2001, I tried to kill myself.

It didn't take, obviously. Partway through the process I ruined a couple of perfectly good towels and called an ambulance.

There's a few reasons I did this. None of them were good enough. None of them are justifications. At the time, though - at the time they were all that mattered. That's how it always seems, when you're at that point. Nothing else is visible. Your world becomes a very dark tunnel.

It took a long time to recover. Not physically - now I have two very fine scars that are basically invisible unless you know what to look for. Mentally. I had suffered from significant anxiety problems beforehand, and they only got worse; for years, I pretty much sequestered myself away in my room, only emerging briefly every now and then. To compliment this, for as long as I knew how to assess myself and my feelings, I have suffered from depression.

The accepted wisdom is that if you think of committing suicide, then you really ought to get help immediately. I confide in you, dear reader, that this would be impossible for me; because however briefly, ever since I did it once, I have thought about it regularly.

Does this affect how I live my life day-to-day? Well no, not especially. Nowhere near as much as my physical health (which long-time readers will know is pretty fucked, and not just because I'm fat). It's just a thing, that pops up in the back of my skull every now and then. For me it's as much a part of life as that urge to slap someone for being rude, or to shout at someone for doing something stupid, or to buy something I clearly can't really afford just because it looks neat.

Human beings are animals, and animals have urges. One way in which we can be better people is to not give in to the urges we feel. The urge to immediately strike back when wronged, or to hurt others when we are hurt, or to pursue a brief insubstantial high in exchange for a long-term low. I'm not saying that the life of an ascetic is a good one - but as I often say, moderation in all things (including moderation).

If you look at life this way...then the call to end it, no matter how soft, is another harmful urge to be controlled. We all face shadows and darkness, and we all have mechanisms to cope with it. Some mechanisms are better than others - harmful in and of their own right - but the important thing is that we don't give in.

Here's where I could spout any number of insipid platitudes that I've seen all across social media, but honestly - that's not very me, is it? That's not very me at all.

In truth the reason it is important is simply because life is here to be lived. There's no purpose outside of that which we give ourselves - and my purpose is to keep going. Happiness happens. I have felt it, I have seen it, and I believe in it. Happiness makes it worthwhile. Some days are easy, and some days are hard - but I never regret surviving the day I almost didn't.

Between then and now I have grown so much. I've seen so much of the good (and bad) side of life. I've met people that have changed me, almost always for the better. I've seen things, read things, heard things that have made every day worth it. I've seen my favourite bands play live, I've seen the sun rise over mountains and the stars over a desert. The days that have seemed the worst have ended up containing moments of utter joy, crystalline and near-perfect, embedded in the shit of mediocrity.

It's hard to remember that. A lot of the time. I only see it right now because I am making the deliberate and concerted effort; that doesn't mean it isn't there, always there, waiting in between the shadows.

All of this was prompted because a friend of mine posted something the other night; a picture that stated simply, "I am glad that you survived".

I'm glad I survived, too.

Not Born To Pay Bills

It is sometimes a hard thing to deal with depression as a vaguely nihilistic person.

You see a lot of motivational posts all over social media. A lot of these posts talk about purpose, meaning, so on, so forth.

It's great that people can find things like that helpful or soothing or actually motivational, you know? It's nice that the things can actually prove to be useful to folks, because everyone copes differently and everyone needs a different way forwards.

For me, all the motivational stuff makes me feel a little nauseous.

Like...I am sure some of them (if not most, if not all) are made by people who don't necessarily need the motivation they provide. They always strike me as hollow platitudes. Like there is something inherently mindlessly optimistic about it all, like someone that's never lost a limb telling me how it will feel, or someone who isn't drowning smiling calmly and telling me that it'll be okay, just picture the oxygen entering my lungs.

More than that, though - more than that is the notion that there's something beyond, and if only I believe in it, then it'll give me the strength to do the next thing. Which I can't do. Because if the recovery is built on the belief in something that can't be proven, then there's nothing to keep it all from falling down when you have that moment of doubt. All that can hold it together is your belief, your unshakeable belief...

...and you are better off devoting that to yourself.

"You were not born to just pay bills and die," one of them says. That's true. In truth? You weren't born for anything at all. You were born because of point A leading to point B, and the cell separation at point C, and the birth at point D. You're not here FOR anything. You're here BECAUSE you were conceived.

My function is to keep going. I wasn't put here with a purpose. Happiness is the one thing that should be pursued without question - though not at the cost of other people's. What else is there? All life demands is sufferance. We owe it to ourselves to make that as easy on us as possible.

Something my dad used to say, when he was very, very sick. "All I want is a peaceful life." I think that is what all people want, in a way. More than to be wildly succesful, more than to be vastly wealthy or permanently entertaining; we want to be able to breathe, to take time and to have that time to ourselves.

We spend a significant proportion of our lives doing things to try and achieve that peace. The average citizen of the UK works 1,677 hours a year. We go through school, we try and normalise, we go through everything that is expected of us just so we can get to a point where we have warmth and shelter and a lack of hunger. Then we have to keep it up - we run on the spot to keep that place. We put ourselves through daily experiences that lead to heart conditions and buildups of stress just so we have somewhere to go and sit and not be stressful anymore.

That's the life we have, the cards we are dealt. All we can do is try and change it to something better, and find our peace and our happiness as best we are able.

That's something to believe in.

People Live Here

I want to share a song with you.

This song is by a band called Rise Against; it's from their most recent album at time of writing, Black Markets. It's called People Live Here.

The first time I heard this song, I was in public, so I just...swallowed, and kept going. Then I got home and listened to it again, and really let it sink in, and that was a messy one. It's one of those songs - there's a few of them that really get to me.

The lyrics are below:

My god is better than yours
And the walls of my house are so thick I hear nothing at all
I followed you out in the storm, but it carried you off
And I burned every picture of yours, was that not enough?

My gun is bigger than yours
So let's arm the masses and see what the bastards do then
Walking tall once set us apart, now we're down on all fours
Do you cry my name in the dark like I do yours?

These storms are getting stronger now, the trusses all bend and sway
The lightning hits, the power goes out in the fray
As the waves crash high and the shoreline disappears
I will scream to the sky "Hey people live here"

But my dreams are not unlike yours
They long for the safety and break like a glass chandelier
But there's laughter and oh there is love, just past the edge of our fears
And there's chaos when push comes to shove, but it's music to my ears

May you be in heaven before the devil knows you're dead
And may these winds be always at your back
'Cause when we're all just ghosts and the madness overtakes us
We will look at the ashes and say "People lived here"

From the penthouse to the holy martyr, sea to shining sea
From the coffins full of kindergarteners, is this what you call free?
From the hate that drips from all your crosses, are your hands so clean?
There's a wildfire and it's spreading far, from sea to shining sea

When we're all just ghosts and the madness overtakes us
I will scream to the sky
Yeah I'll scream to the sky
Yeah I'll scream to the sky
"Hey people live here"

...do you...get it?

Like does it needle you like it needles me? Does it tug on that nerve inside of you, that runs right to your brain, and demands that you FEEL something?

Like all pain?

Just...god. For the last few days I feel like I've been rent open. I've been ill, that much I know - I can hear it when I lay down and breathe, like popping candy in my trachea. I've had some bad news that I don't want to go into publically, though if you ask I may tell. On top of all this, I've seen more racism, hysteria, xenophobia and bastardly behaviour in the past few weeks thanI recall seeing in the past few years.

I can understand why people get so frustrated at the world. Like identifying all of the individual ways in which it is fucked up and diagnosing causality, that is difficult, and takes time, and can be agonising - it requires a lot of reading in a lot of different areas. It can be very hard to identify one's own bias and try and work around that, too. If you even recognise that you ARE biased.p

I'm biased.

I'm biased because right now I'm seeing a war being prosecuted by a right wing organisation against everyone else, and another war of a different type being prosecuted by another right wing organisation against everyone else, and yet another war of yet another different type being prosecuted by yet another right wing organisation against STILL EVERYONE ELSE. And some of those right wing organisations are fighting each other, and everyone else at the same time.

I'm biased because I can't see how any of the parties involved can't see that they are doing a huge amount of harm to people that don't deserve it. It maddens me that grinning idiots and smirking madmen and flushed pompadours and furious fanatics deliberately hurt and kill people, some directly, some indirectly. Some pull the trigger, some pull the funding, some sit in the middle and point fingers and hate, and hate, and hate.

I want to grab them all by the shoulders and scream at them, yell and bawl and cry and shout until I can't feel my throat burning. Stop it. You know you're doing it. STOP IT. We're all just PEOPLE, you fucking monsters. We're just trying to live. Our lives are so FUCKING HARD before you even decide to weigh your shit into it and you just make it worse because of whatever fucking STUPID REASON you care to use to justify your abominable behaviour, and it's WRONG, and you need to NOT FUCKING DO IT.

I swallow that down. It's all I can do to swallow that down. I try and deal with my problems as best I can, a step at a time, and not resort to yelling, because yelling won't help anyone.

Right?

Right.

Right...

It Is By Will Alone (On Insecurity pt4)

This is the forth, and final, part of a series of blog posts on insecurity. Each one has had a different theme.

I read a fair amount of Nietzsche.

...no, wait, come back!

Okay okay. I HAVE read a fair amount of Nietzsche, and that's led me to some interesting thoughts about us as a people and how we do things.

So I agree with his thinking in terms of the "will to power" - the constant drive to succeed, achieve, and control one's environment. To put one's self in a position of power if at all possible. That's basic human behavior. You can see it as greed, but that's a gross oversimplification.

I think the reason why we want this, at a very base level - driven instinctively by that urge to control and command - is because we're insecure.

Yep, I've been banging on about it for the past three weeks - it is time to draw a conclusion.

We, at our core, are insecure. It is part of being sentient, of having an ego, of having consciousness. Our fear of failure is tied to our drive for success. When what you want is so deeply ingrained in you that it governs you, then surely the urge to have it is paralleled by an equal and opposite fear of NOT having it.

Doesn't that make a degree of sense? The urge to survive as a constant leads us to make that survival a stable thing, a given thing rather than a continuous struggle. We want that safety net, that security - we're afraid of the alternative, because the alternative is not surviving at all. We're afraid of it, avoid it in the same way as we instinctively avoid fire, dangerous situations and awful things.

Now a great many people will probably claim that this really doesn't apply to them. "But John," you will cry, hauling yourself out of the plastic bathtub filled with Tesco own brand whipped cream. "I'm not afraid, or insecure! Everything you have said is just an attempt to validate your own anxiety!"

Perhaps, but I also call bullshit.

There is a disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease; it is a genetic disorder, and it damages two small almond-sized bits of your brain - and when that happens, you can't feel fear any more. Unless that happens, boy howdy, you feel fear. It's what you do with it, that counts.

We've all heard the saying - feel the fear and do it anyway. It's true. There's no bravery without fear. Everyone feels it and it is something that we need to admit to and acknowledge - ignoring our weaknesses and our flaws is a really good way to lose a hundred battles. (That's a Sun Tzu joke.)

We seek to make our lives better, to make our lives more secure, because we fear that lack of security. It's what we do, what we spend most of our time doing. We need to take control of our environment because we're afraid of what would happen if it controlled us.

Some of the worst situations people can be in involve loss of control and loss of agency. The most stressful situations are those out of our control, where we have to watch the disaster happen right in front of us. Knowing you can't change it. That is the real nightmare. Life taken out of one's hands, and placed at the whim of causality.

As long as we have power - as long as we have control over our lives - we can minimise our exposure to the things we are insecure about. We can reduce contact with toxic individuals, lower the chance of mishaps, ensure that our day-to-day lives pass by with as little fear as possible. In the modern world that often comes down to money; the power-money dynamic is well-documented in this day and age. The two are often conflated.

Hate the awkwardness of public transport? You won't ever have to worry about it if you get a car. Nervous about going to the gym because you don't like how your body looks (but want to go to the gym anyway because you don't like how your body looks)? Buy your own gym equipment, or find a gym with such open hours that you can go when no-one else is there.

This is the urge Nietzsche speaks of. To achieve and excel, and thus secure one's existence. Outrun your demons by feeding your angels. I've spoken before about how one's needs in life change as one's income or standing alters, right here. It's true. The end argument is that all we really want is to have agency over our lives - which is not only something we should want and strive for, but something that we should help everyone achieve.

Which is why we're so pissed off that the Tory government wants to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and if you're not pissed off, then you haven't been paying attention...but I digress.

Insecurity, then. It's the devil we run from, the constant whip against our backs. Sometimes we control it, negate it, nullify and minimise it - and sometimes it guides us. Sometimes it's a little of both. Sometimes it is one but we think it is the other.

It is the root of a great many evils. It leads to racism and greed and who knows what else. I could probably draw a line of causality between most crimes that occur on a daily basis, and a base insecurity that led to it happening.

It haunts us, this fear, this gnawing anxiety. It hides itself in other drives and motives. It poisons otherwise noble intentions, adds inflection to sentences and stills voices that would otherwise speak out.

It costs lives.

Insecurity. The burden of sentience, of creativity, of imagination.

If it were a dragon, we'd be well-served to slay it.

Feeling Strangely Fine

I'm sorry to disappoint anyone misled by the title, but this blog post isn't about Semisonic's second album.

The following disclaimer can probably apply to every entry I put into this blog but I feel it deserves repeating anyway: this entire thing is going to be from a very personal perspective. If I generalise, please understand that I am really only speaking for me. I wouldn't presume to speak for anyone else - but if you see yourself in what I write, then know that we understand each other, at least a little.

Everyone knows at least one hypochondriac, although they may not self-identify as such.

You know the type. They are sure they are sick most of the time. Either they go to the doctor once a week with a new complaint, or they never ever go to the doctor and self-diagnose instead. Either way, whenever you haven't seen them for a few days, the next time you speak to them - there's something new wrong with them.

I'm not going to say they aren't sick, or there isn't something wrong. That's not for me to say, and it's none of my business.

Here's the contrast, though; I have noticed that people with a chronic or ongoing condition, almost universally, respond to questions about their general health with a neutral or vague-positive answer. "How Are You" is replied to with terms like "Fine," or "Not Bad", or "Okay" - most of the time.

There's exceptions of course. Once you're past that moment in the street, sat down somewhere and talking and get onto actual conversational topics, and words like "In Yourself" and "Really" get tabbed onto the end of the original question - that is when more pointed answers come out.

If we went out the night before and drank enough liquor to stun a platoon of Royal Marines, then we'll happily talk about how we now have the hangover from Hades. Broken arm? Yep, look at this cast, yes I chose pink fuck off I like it. Fatigue? Arthritis? Anything chronic or perpetual? ...yeah, fine, not bad.

In my case at least, there's a lot of reasons for this.

One of those is that I'm hyper-aware of the depressing effect of hearing that one of your friends, colleagues or associates is suffering, especially if there's nothing you can do about it. I'm usually reluctant to lay that on someone. Another is a kind of insecurity; talk about how shit you feel but try to put a brave face on it and you come across as something of a martyr, whereas the lack of brave face can come across as being very moany. Again, two things I don't want to lay on anyone.

(All this is in my own head of course. Anyone else talking to me about things they are going through, I would never think that they were moaning excessively, or nailing themselves to a cross. I'm just bad at taking my own advice.)

Another factor that influences the answer to the How Are You - the scales are different. If in general a person is okay, and isn't in much pain, and doesn't find anything difficult, then their knee joint being particularly painful of a morning is going to warrant explanation or exclamation. I, however, have a very odd relationship with pain. It's worthy of comment when my joints DON'T hurt - or when they hurt enough to stop me doing my already-reduced average daily allotment of doing things.

It becomes the new normal. At first you rail against it, hate it, loathe it, want nothing more than for it to not be happening...but over days, weeks, months, years, it becomes life. It is something you work with and around rather than something you mindlessly defy. You get zen about it, or you go a little crazy.

That doesn't mean to say that you should try second-guessing people if you know they're ill and they say they're fine, because there's another reason why we say as such: some of us don't like a fuss made of us, or the attention that a full and frank explanation of our condition and its current effect on us might draw.

I'm the kind of guy that deals with sickness pretty much alone. If I have the flu, or a cold, or anything like that - I retreat into a little cave and stay there until I'm better. People bugging me doesn't help me, and in my experience, keeping your head straight helps you heal. Psychosomatics and all. So if one applies that to a condition that is not only life-altering but also totally ongoing, then, well...who wants a barrage of questions every time you get asked if you're doing okay?

It's a shitty thing to have to manage. If we look at it like a car, then it would feature numerous structural problems that make it awkward and ungainly to handle, but taking it to a garage sometimes makes it worse. Drive that for two years, and you'll stop bitching about the stiff gearstick real fast. Sooner or later, even the desperately uncomfortable seat becomes a background annoyance rather than a bane of one's existence, if you can't change it.

In the end, it is what it is. Keeping your head straight is the most important thing - it is easy to lose hope and become demoralised, even easier to focus on the debilitating effect of one's condition rather than...well...anything else, really. Some days it can feel a lot bigger than you, a lot bigger than the rest of the world even.

One way of preventing that - one way of looking illness in the eye and letting it know that it isn't all that big a deal after all - is saying that we're fine. Saying we're okay. A dismissal. Sure, most joints I have from the neck down feel like they're filled with broken glass, and my lungs are half-filled with scar tissue - but you know what? I'm fine. Can do. Can deal. Can cope. I am London circa 1941, and the illness is the Luftwaffe. Fuck you mate. I'm alright. Coventrate my fat ass.

So...yeah. I'm fine, I guess.