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So it was just a month ago that I went under the knife. When I was lying there - Tuesday night, Jan 29th - I felt that I was in the worst possible position in the world. I guess what I am saying is that hindsight is 20/20. Except that doesn't really make any sense. I guess what I am really saying is that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. No wait, that doesn't make any sense either. I guess what I am really trying to say is that objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are. Yeah, that's it, that's what I am trying to say.
Ok, I'll try again. And this time I'll try and impart some semblense that I connect on some level with the rest of the human race. When I was lying in the ICU with all those wires and tubes hooked up to me, I couldn't think about the big picture. The fact that I wouldn't snore anymore, keeping me from every getting a solid night's sleep. The fact that Claudine could stay in our bed all night instead of being rousted every night by my impression of a congested wildebeest. The fact that I would be able to run and bike again without having to continuosly suck air in through my mouth instead of breathing in through my nose. I just focused on pain. Pain and self-pity. Pain and self-pity and helplessness. Pain and self-pity and helplessness and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope (just a little Monty Python slipping in there. I add this note only because the Python reference is so obscure that I didn't want people to actually think that I was in any way, in fact, devoted to the Pope). It was ugly. But I don't think I am that different from anyone else. The average human being has never been good at "seeing the big picture". Remember the first time you were dumped? You were miserable. You got drunk. You put on Depeche Mode and cried. You swore off the opposite sex, knowing - just knowing that you would never, ever date again. But it all blew over. You recovered. And you fell in love again. And, of course, you got dumped again and the whole thing happened all over again. Didn't you learn anything? No! And that's the point. We never learn anything. When those emotionally trying times hit, we only live in the present. We can't immediately imagine a time when things are going to get better. We wallow in our misery, convinced that life sucks. Weep, weep, weep. Life is so unfair, why me?
The embarassing part - or at least one of the embarassing parts - is looking back at your pit of weakness from a point in the future. Looking back at my wallowing in my own pain and self-pity a month ago is tough to look at. I didn't think so then, but I could have probably sucked it up a little and made an effort to be more human. But like I said before, no ever sees it when it is happening to them, only from the safe vantage point of the future. I had a long distance relationship going in college. I met Karina at Rutgers, but then her family moved to Orange County, CA. We visited each other a number of times and talked on the phone a lot. When we finally broke up (over the phone), I felt the need to go for a long walk. I put on my denim jacket and sneakers and went out for a long walk. The problem was it was about 11:30 at night with a heavy, wet rain/sleet/snow combination falling with about 5 inches of snow already on the ground. Why do people do this? Love? Self-pity? Dunno. But I walked and I walked. Finally, a person I'd never met pulled over in his car and practically begged me to let him give me a ride back to my dorm. I say "practically", but screw that. He begged me. I must have looked like an idiot. I was sure that my whole world had collapsed. Of course that was about 18 years ago. If I think about it really hard now, I can kinda remember what she looked like. Hmm, that was hardly my whole world collapsing, was it?
The point of this thing is... well, I don't really have a point. I'm sorry if you feel cheated now, you've read through this whole thing waiting for a payoff that's apparently never going to come. Anyway, I often think that the one thing that I would like to be able to teach my kids is not to take things so seriously. That not all the heart-wrenching dramas they are going to experience are going to be so heart-wrenching in the long run. But I can't do that. They won't listen. They've got to go through it and be able to see it from the other side. Just like I'm doing now about my dopey operation.
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