There are some clear undeniable signs that my health has declined significantly this past year and isn't coming back. Even more shortness of breath, a loss of appetite, loss of enthusiasm for sandwiches or giving money away to all and sundry at the poker tables, difficulty sleeping, a lack of concentration, delirium, boils in my armpits, blood in my stools, a burning sensation when I urinate accompanied by a shrill whistling noise, impatient vultures on my front lawn, lightning and thunder always above me and so on.
It is of course important not to get too dispirited however. I once assumed that a nurse rubbing a warm balm into my skin would be one of the best days of my life, but no. Anyone who's ever had their earlobe blood gases analysed will appreciate this is far from the truth. The lesson here of course, is that no matter how things may seem, they can always get much much worse.
Haahaha, I kid, I kid people. That is not the lesson. Hahahahahahahahaha. No no no really hahahaha.
cough cough erm.. The lesson is this:
The path of destiny is shrouded in an impenetrable fog. We know this simply from the met-office medium to long term forecasts. The sort of fogs that engulfed London in the 19th century. It is a necessary fog, for it is much better we know not of our futures.
What happens when this fog is lifted? You can see London!! And who wants to see London? No one, the literal or the metaphorical. No, it is much better to exist blissfully unaware of the nightmare that is lurking somewhere in our midst.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ..NO NO I KID AGAIN. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
aww come back. What I'm saying people, is that our very lives and interactions are too complex to see any further than today a few feet in front of our noses and therefore to draw any conclusions about ones future is both futile and counter-productive.
Now then, I have been to the big house this day and have had to accept over tea and biscuits that I am essentially a respiratory cripple who cannot function efficiently without being hooked up to O2 all the time. I knew this of course, but only properly accepted this today. This is the biggest concession to CF I have made since I left work.
Accepting one cannot provide monies and a living for oneself is quite an unpalatable pie to digest. Accepting one cannot provide even enough oxygen to function efficiently is an even bigger one.
This has all the hallmarks of oppression in it's most profound form. No one likes to be dictated to. At least when it's a Government you can camp out in a square, when it's your own genes doing the oppressing there is no freedom to be won, well there's one but we're not keen on that just yet. If only CF had some tanks I could simply stand in front of and wave a little flag at. But that of course would be the wrong approach. This is an adjustment I am struggling with. But only because I am tackling it from an incorrect perspective.
As poor Seneca was about to do himself in at the behest of Nero his family and friends wept at his bedside. "People" Seneca admonished, "where is your philosophy? Surely we were all aware Nero was a nutcase?" In other words, this was to be expected and therefore accepted and their frustrations were naive. Quite. So where is my philosophy? It's hardly worth having one if it's abandoned when it's most needed no?
I have always maintained that one has a sort of symbiotic relationship with CF. Living with it, rather than fighting against it. This new adjustment means the end of my previous days of launching myself around the place, half man half German lager wondering into danger without a care in the world, but was this my raison d'état? No. And of course there are positives here, I just have refused to see them.
For every drunken night I will forego, I will be hang over free the next day. For every person that points and stares someone may pat me on the head out of a false, silly and patronising sense of compassion and I like to be patted.
There is no ideal, we are never denied anything as we are never entitled to anything in the first place. Ones life is what it is and mine will now be one where there is more wearing of cardigans and less sleeping half in and half out of my house with my trousers down by my ankles and my stuff strewn over a wide area.
A life of slow contemplation, spiritual enrichment, lower fat foods and Spanish guitar muzak. A time where the physical world makes way for the metaphysical. Where I am no longer a man, more a sort of thing that drifts about. And why not?
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