A New Start?

I’ve been immersing myself in all things Lin Manuel Miranda since I got home and I have all this new inspiration but what prompted me to write this is I just watched a speech given by Daveed Diggs at the university he graduated from and it made me remember that I am living my life out of order. I always seem to feel like I’m not doing enough - or anything, to be honest. I have felt like a failure, like a lost puppy who can’t seem to find her bearing anywhere. So many things I’ve tried haven’t “worked out.” That’s a complicated phrase. Is it failure or learning? Listening to Lin and Daveed talk about their journeys I am reminded that I have been living my life almost backwards. I spent my youth navigating the dangerous waters of my family and my teens and twenties watching all my parental figures die and taking care of grany, a master class of difficulty and legacy and lunacy. Then in therapy I discovered that not everyone’s life is like this, that there is a better way. So I started to study. I didn’t realize how long the road would be. I started to take more leaps of faith and for the better part of a decade had very little to show for them. Listening to Lin and Daveed describe their first decade of pursuing their passions made me feel better. These last two years I have felt like a caterpillar in a chrysalis which sounds poetic but feels like goo and mess and death. Daveed spoke of rebirths in his speech and I am reminded of how I should have died when I got sepsis but for the sliver of a chance that I happened to be living with roommates who happened to find me in time - I didn’t die. I got another chance. Then the world as we knew it died. The pandemic hit and breathing was no longer safe so I locked myself away and kept myself safe but my soul died little by little. I enrolled in the online ordination course, desperately planting the seed that I hoped would help me find my way out again, and I struggled. I went to the hospital again, for the second time in two years and lost my gallbladder and broke a 44 year record of no surgeries, and found out that pain meds don’t work very well on me post-op. It took at least two months to recover from that. I wrote the final project for my class, bought my plane ticket to London and bought a box of KN95 masks, terrified of the virus but determined to go to my graduation. And I did. And I traveled, and it was hard and exhausting and my body almost couldn’t keep up but there were sweet moments with friends and some great Instagram pictures and I finally made it home, where my life was patiently waiting for me. I had lost my previous dwelling, having gotten a last minute eviction notice and packed as fast as I could to get everything in storage in time. All that was waiting for me when I returned. I started to watch more Lin Manuel Miranda interviews. I reached out about places to live on Craigslist. I went to a really nice farm in Grass Valley that looked great on paper but the owner was a terrible fit for me. I was disappointed. I had a place in Auburn lined up that sounded nice but the owner told me that there was someone before me who had expressed interest in it. I was disappointed. I have had so many terrible living situations I despaired of where I would land this time. I found an adorable RV park outside of Colfax with a tiny motel room that would do, and the Auburn lady said I was first on her list. The wind shifted. Now I had two good places to pick from! I went with the Auburn house and it has been wonderful. I have been watching everything I can get my hands on from Lin Manuel Miranda and his work and his worldview are seeping into my pores. I am inspired again. I have energy again. And I remember that I have already done some of the hardest work I will (likely/hopefully) ever have to do. I’m living my life backwards. Yes I’m 44 but I’m like a new college grad, just discovering how my passion fits into the world. Maybe I can make something of this life after all. 

 

My Body Is Not A Temple

 My body is not a temple. My body is a rental car, and I got a lemon. 

When we incarnate, come to Earth for whatever purpose we do, we are given a body, like a rental car. Some people get brand new rental cars that work great, come with all the bells and whistles and a great maintenance plan. Some people get a clunker that barely works, or does not work at all. It sits in the garage, demanding large amounts of care and maintenance before it will do the most basic of tasks, like take us to the grocery store or God forbid, somewhere fun once in a while. Some people get rental cars that only work for a day, a week, a month, or a few years before they have to turn them back in and go back to Wherever We Come From. The whither-tos and the why-fors (as Bilbo Baggins would say) are hotly debated. Where do we come from? Why do we come here? What is the point? When faced with mortality, one must try to answer these questions. What do I want to do with my limited time here on the blue marble? If I die tomorrow, or next year, or live until I’m 80, the questions are the same. Why me? Why now? What am I supposed to do here? What do I want to do with this time I have? Some of us have more choices than others. We all have options in different measure. One person might be healthy but struggle with money. Another might have a great career but have a hard time with relationships. I have a decent brain and a crappy body. So I find myself in a narrow margin of the crossover between what I want to do, what I need to do, and what I actually can do. And that margin gets narrower with each passing year. In my attempt to find something I can do, I have had what my friends refer to as many “adventures.” I suppose they are. The adventures, the crazy off the wall things I do with my life, are an attempt to find a niche I fit into as well as my way of saying to this rental car, I’m going to do as much as I can while I can and make my life as interesting as possible while I can still walk and live without too many medical restrictions. Because none of us really knows how much time we have, and this is even more apparent when living with chronic illness.

I just got my second tattoo this week. My body is sensitive, so I do not do well with the process. My tattoo artist and friend is very patient with me and reassures me that I’m ok, I’m not being too obnoxious, that she understands. Bless her heart. As I write this, I am recovering from that process as well as some unknown abdominal pain that might be nothing or might be the thing that kills me. Or worse, somewhere in between. 

I died of sepsis once. They found me and brought me back to life. I am grateful for that, and for the second chance in this beat up rental car, but the fear is still there. What if this is a tumor and I’m going to have to have surgery (one of my worst fears)? Currently I take nine pills per day, which is more than I would like, but pretty manageable. What if my health gets worse? At this point I think I would rather just die than have to be subjected to painful medical interventions, but it’s impossible to predict how I’ll react if I am presented with that choice. I did have some time, last time I narrowly escaped death, on that medical bed to think. As I lay there receiving life saving treatment, not one doctor or nurse  told me what was going on. So I had some time to consider that idea that I might die there and what the meant for me. I was strangely ok with it, and only lamented that I would not get to spend more time with my friends, doing what I loved. (This was right before Covid, and little did I know that would happen anyway, at least for the next couple of years and as of this writing, who knows how much longer?) Finally I asked my ICU nurse, “Am I dying?” They looked shocked and reassured me that no, I was going to be ok. I wonder that I had to ask. 

So why do I put myself through the unnecessary pain of a tattoo, when I spend the rest of my life avoiding pain? Because I’ve only got this rental car for a little while, and I want to decorate it. There’s no use in preserving it, keeping it “pure.” It was never that way to begin with, so I might as well have some fun with it before my time is up and this body is discarded. I wonder what I will think about all this when I get back to Wherever We Come From? I suppose I want my legacy to be that I did my best, was kind and loving more often than not, and made my space a little brighter. And had some fun along the way. 

(Addendum - that abdominal pain ended up being my gallbladder, which I had to get removed.)