March 2: The Hard Way To Grow

As Sophocles said, “Time, which sees all things, has found you out.” It sure has latched onto me and there is no more avoiding or denying it. My body feels every minute of play, sport, and training I have participated in. Every injury I have suffered is riddled with arthritis, scar tissue, and in some cases, nerve damage. But physical pain is not all I am dealing with and for the first time, I am trying to focus on the emotional component more than the physical. The problem is, there are days my body refuses to play by my new set of rules and these past few days have been a prime example.

I know I can’t ignore one without it adversely affecting the other. My physical discomfort has been off the chart since my last TMS session two days ago. My spine will not let up and there is no getting physically comfortable. It’s times like these I remember being in the ER and screaming in pain for over six hours. Nothing they gave me for my pain made a dent and all I wanted was for it to end. It would not be until that afternoon when the head of ER came on duty and injected something into my IV that in just a couple of seconds left me feeling euphoric.

Whatever he gave me had me hooked. I knew better than to ask what was administered because if I knew what it was, I would chase that high again and again like any junkie. Instead, once I was out of the hospital, I fell back on my old method of sucking up my pain and not dealing with it. In my mind, it seemed like the smart thing to do, but in the long run, sucking up my feelings was one of the primary triggers to my depression and anxiety.

I called my children last night and filled them in on the struggles I have withheld and about my two overdoses. All I can say is how fortunate I feel to have three children who are as understanding as mine. Each offered their unique perspective but their love is clearly unconditional.

The home I grew up in on Hilltop Drive was perfect for me. Besides a great neighborhood with plenty of kids to play with, my backyard was my sanctuary when it was daylight. Our family enjoyed summers poolside. My siblings enjoyed inviting friends over, but I usually preferred the pool when no one else was using it. I’d grab a ball and leap off the diving board and slam dunk it into our floating hoop.

More than the pool, my true sanctuary was found playing by myself with any ball I could get hold of. There were hours upon hours where I ran pass patterns for my aspiring quarterback older brother, Chuck, and plenty of one-on-one basketball games where he’d destroy me. However, my sanctuary was when I was alone.

I’m pretty sure no one in my family understood my fascination with kicking a ball. I learned the game of soccer from a classmate in second grade and took right to it. Using our retaining wall as a backboard, I practice my passing and trapping skills with both feet. If I needed a soccer goal, the wall of our wood shed sufficed. I didn’t care how bad I marked up the shed wall because I knew every summer my dad was going to task me with painting it.

If I had a singular soccer skill it was my ability to kick a ball almost any distance with pinpoint accuracy. Corner kicks and free kicks were my responsibility and all my coach had to tell me was where he wanted the ball placed or who to aim it towards. Did he need me to fade it away from the goal or hook it inward toward either the near or far post? He just had to tell me and I obliged. I also knew how to place a ball with the right amount of pace into the correct space and deliver a pass to a teammate at speed.

I realized at a pretty young age that I was never going to grow as tall as my older brothers or dad. I topped out at 5’10’’ which is not exactly the stuff professional sports teams desire. However, I was thrilled to see the NFL move toward what were straight on placekickers to soccer style kickers, or as they were often referred to as side winders.

By junior high school, I began taking my brother Chuck’s discarded and worn footballs and using them to practice my side winding skills. I purchased a book about soccer style kicking written by NFL kicker Pete Gogolak and soon I was spending hours practicing my field goal kicking.

Just off our back patio was the swimming pool and around its exterior was a four foot tall chain link fence. In my mind, it served a perfect purpose as the oncoming rush of a defensive line trying to block the kicks I teed up on my official NFL kicking tee. My aim was always our basketball backboard across our yard and anchored to two posts attached to our back retaining wall. Behind it stood the playground bars my sisters used to swing on. To their left was the teepee fort. My goal was to clear the top of the backboard between the space of the bars and teepee. After watching each kick sail across the yard, I’d sprint across our back lawn, up the steps to the bars and would retrieve my football.

As time passed, I learned to tee up the football left and right of my center aim so as to account for different kicking angles. In my mind, if I was going to ever be a professional athlete, it was either going to be as a professional soccer player or NFL kicker. My desire was soccer but like most things in my life, I learned to keep a contingency plan and mine was place kicking.

At that time, I had no idea what I was really chasing. I thought it was my future, but the reality was it was my way of gaining my father’s attention. Instead, it was often his annoyance. You see, the placement of where I teed up the football was just outside the family room door which was where my father’s chair was when he sat and watched a ballgame or rerun of a western. As it was, my kicking annoyed him far more than intrigued him. When I became an annoyance, I relocated to the court area and turned my attention to a soccer ball.

I’ve written before about how my father never saw me play soccer despite competing at it through my freshman year at Diablo Valley College. He never saw one of my baseball games. Once, he was dragged to a basketball game of mine when I was in third grade. For some reason, he could not invest himself in me which was both our loss.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I played on the varsity soccer team at the same time I was kicking for the varsity football team. He saw the football games, but never as a parent. For years, he served as the voluntary team doctor and attended every varsity game. When the fall sports banquet rolled around and I received a special block A for lettering in both sports simultaneously, dad was not there. Most likely, he was at home sipping a brandy after his two glasses of wine with dinner and martini before contemplating whether to take a Percocet to ease his back pain. Decades later, through therapy, I would realize he was adding to my emotional baggage.

Each of my siblings can talk about their own experiences of feeling invisible in the presence of our father so mine is a shared experience. However, trauma is never carried the same by people exposed to the same type, even when it happens together. I do not defend or condone my father for his actions, I just try to understand what caused them. Hopefully, I have a better relationship with my kids today than I ever had with my father. However, because I learned not to rely on my dad for any help and did not want to add to mom’s burden of raising the eight of us without our father’s help, I try never to burden my kids with my struggles.

Sharing with them the depth I have been struggling the past two years is a load I needed to lift. However, deep inside, I still worry if doing so just created new burdens for them. Letting go of my past without creating new anxieties is going to be a challenge for me.

There are no lies or truths, just our interpretations of our experiences. I can logically make sense of many bad experiences, whether to me or to others, while at the same time being a mess inside over things others might not see as a big deal. It’s what makes people unique. None of us are wired exactly the same and even if we were, our age, gender, upbringing, and countless other factors will influence how we react to situations.

Facts are irrefutable evidence as long as they coincide with what is in our hearts. Lies are no different. It’s why it is pointless to argue with someone whose mind is made up. It’s a waste of energy that only makes both parties more set in their ways.

The only people who can change minds are ourselves. I prefer to make sense of the actions of others but know in doing so, the end result only suits my personal narrative. I could have aired out my issues with my father long before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I made the choice not to because I learned through my observations of his interactions with other family members he was not interested in change because he, in my view, was afraid to think he might be wrong. He would rather disown a child than attempt to see things from their perspective. His way was the only way and he had no time for those who felt different.

Sadly, for him, he learned a hard lesson. It took the sudden death of my brother Rob at the age of 42 to make my dad realize he had failed to tell any of his kids he loved them. Rob was my father’s first, but not only, cast off. Rather than admiring Rob’s individuality and own path in life, dad stubbornly stuck to his anger toward him for rejecting dad’s expectations. It struck my father all the harder when he saw Rob’s service spill beyond the funeral hall where it was held as friends and former neighbors came from all over to pay their respects.

My dad worked at making amends with others after Rob’s death. He always made a point of saying he loved me whenever we said our good-byes after I visited him. I told him the same, but hearing the words from him always rang empty with me. Inside, I knew I was only hearing them because of the guilt my father was racked with over never telling Rob those words. They always came off as if it was part of a list of things he had to start checking off before he died. The words were said, but they never came with a hug or with much feeling. Still, I knew he was working to learn from a lesson I hope to never have to experience and for that I was thankful.

It’s the first Sunday of March, there’s a light rain falling, the barometric pressure is below 30, and I feel like shit. There is nothing I can do about the barometer reading so I began my day thankful that Mother Nature is watering my yard and softening up the dirt where I soon intend to plant a tree. My only real concern is whether the woman who is going to provide me with a much needed massage is going to be up for it or will she still be knocked out with vertigo. She comes well recommended, but has canceled on me four times, twice when her roommate had to drive her to the ER.

There was a time, not all that long ago, I would have lost my shit over this. However, I have learned her medical problem can either piss me off or help me to remain patient with someone hurting. Until you go through feeling the way I do with chronic pain, it’s easy to dismiss someone who you think is a flake or just a total let down. The fact is, there are plenty of CMTs in Chico who are flakes. I know because they do not return calls or text messages. This woman does and she has gone so far as to promise me a free massage when she is better.

I also have the choice to feel like I have scored a free massage and be happy to collect. However, I am also aware this woman has probably lost a lot of business over the past month and is stressing over paying the rent for her business locale. It will not do me any good if I contribute to that hardship so my intention is to pay. All anyone has to do is look around my community and they are quickly reminded of the financial hardships people face.

Every choice we make sets into place a never ending series of chain reactions. Those reactions can be positive or negative depending on our decision. For me, now that I am retired and the nest is empty, the stresses I face pales compared to the days I was balancing work, family, and fun. I made it through the adult storm our culture creates and now I have the time to work on the sort of things I wished I had made the time for decades ago. Like my dad learning to express his love to me, I am learning from my own previous hard lessons.

I can’t imagine ever going through a twelve step program mainly because my list of people to right my wrongs with is a long one. I could have been a better brother. I could have been a better father. I could have been a better husband. I could have been a better friend, teacher, colleague, classmate, neighbor, and stranger. Thankfully, time has also taught me I am my own worst enemy, I can’t undo the past, and no matter how much atoning I do, my actions forward will determine whether I have learned and grown from past mistakes.

I read this quote earlier this morning, “People are ready to go anywhere, except within.” Our culture encourages us to avoid looking inward. They’d rather we escape ourselves through alcohol and now legalized marijuana. In another generation, we will see the commercialization of hallucinogens as another profitable form to make us forget ourselves.

Expensive vacations, thrill seeking adventures, and large backyard parties help us avoid turning inward. Our constant drive for more money and more things marketed to us as must haves if we want to feel happy do us no good. It’s not until we make a real effort to remove our distractions and turn inward that our minds can begin sorting through our garbage and find our true selves.

Another thing I have learned is to never feel truly fixed. However, by allowing ourselves to look inward and let go of the weights that hold us back, we become less broken. Some of the most broken people I have known were those who always bragged about how great their lives are. Denial is not a path to inner peace.

It appears my massage is cancelled again. It’s still raining outside and will be for the remainder of the day. Bug is curled up in a ball and sleeping on HIS couch. It’s late morning and as quiet out as the middle of the night. I have nothing I have to get done today that can’t wait for tomorrow. Instead of heading out to get as much done as I can, I think I will remain inside and enjoy the peace and quiet.

March 3: Dream Weaving

I mentioned before a recurring dream I have where I am always trying to get to a specific place but never arrive. With each path I go down, I end up at a dead end and have to find a new path that ultimately fails.

This morning, I woke from a similar dream but with a few new twists that tell me things are on the road to working out for me. This time, I am with my dog Bug and somehow we have ended up in the back of a trash truck. We are standing on a pile of garbage and I am trying to figure out how to navigate our way up and over the walls of the truck when it begins moving. With each stop, more trash piles in but instead of it smothering us, we remain on the top. By the time the truck is filled, we are standing on top of a massive pile when a worker finally notices us.

Instead of anger or panic, the worker smiles and tells me not to worry. “This happens all of the time,” he says. He then gets into the truck and begins driving us to our destination. When we arrive, he tells us to have a nice day before driving off.

I wake up and realize the truck was collecting all the garbage from my past before leaving with it so I could enjoy the day before me.

As I write about this, a trash truck has just arrived at my house and picked up my trash from last week.

If computers are patterned after brains, and if they become sluggish with too much useless stuff, they function better when we rid it of its trash. I’ve hung on to too much garbage and I am well past the time to rid myself of it. This year, my spring cleaning is prioritizing my brain.

Despite the outcome of my dream, I woke today feeling like my head was being squeezed by a vise while being used for a game of tug-o-war with my shoulders. With my neck as the rope, they are pulling away at each other and I am left feeling every muscle and fiber being ripped apart. My lower back feels the yardwork from two days ago, my hamstring is not responding to a week of physical therapy, and after two cups of coffee, I still feel like I could fall back to sleep.

This is what I call Monday. It can also be called most any day of the week. I remind myself to not become overwhelmed by it, but I also know I will soon have to make a decision on whether to agree to a trial run for a spinal cord stimulator. It’s hard for me to agree to the trial because I can’t convince myself to want to live with an implanted device that is threaded from the base of my spine to the top of my neck. I feel if I do this, I am agreeing to give up many of the activities I love and rely on for my enjoyment.

If I have learned anything when it comes to medicine, nothing comes as advertised by doctors. Surgeries might correct one issue, but rare is the physician who wants to let you in on the problems or limitations that come from it when they earn their money by cutting on others. When a patient has a problem, in our culture, the expectation is our doctors have a cure. We want cures, but we do not want limitations or having to change our lifestyle. I still long to get back to running and cycling. Working in my yard brings me as much pleasure as it does pain. Exercise for me does not involve a leisurely walk. I don’t have a heart that needs an electronic boost to keep me alive. I just need to jog, lift, dig, stretch, and ride. I’m not sure I can enjoy any of those things knowing at any second I could dislodge a lead and need to have it surgically fixed or be told to stop doing what I call living.

When I am in physical pain, it is no different than feeling emotional turmoil. In either case, logic disappears and all I can think about or seek is anything that will provide me relief.

Painting was meant to help me refocus my mind on something so specific that I would not be able to think about how I feel. There are times it works wonders. Then there are times it reinforces how I feel. Usually, this is when it hurts to grip a brush or lift my arm. It also influences the colors I select, and when my anxiety is high, I lack the patience to wait for paint to fully dry.

Taking the time to physically write down quotes that speak to me quiets my mind, but it also reminds me that sometimes my fingers are not working so well or my throbbing head tells me I need to give it and my neck a break. Physical activity, even when I hurt all over, provides a temporary reprieve from morning pain and stiffness, but a few hours later, I will feel like I spent three hours lifting weights or doing something grueling. I’ll even tell myself I should probably stop doing a physical task, but I know it won’t make a difference. I’m still going to feel the slightest things for days.

Just writing about this makes me feel like I am whining. At my age, we all feel pain. It comes in endless forms and to multiple degrees. What I feel today, and for the last four days, is no different than what I felt as a kid. The difference is, today, I do not have the same level of energy as when I was ten so I am not likely to run, play, or work in the yard all day every day and then collapse in bed totally spent.

Part of me feels I could sleep through tomorrow while another part wonders will my shoulder, neck, head, or hips keep me awake tonight? Buddhism is helping me understand all this worry does me no good. I need to just focus on what is here and now and rejoice in what I have.

The world is nuts these days and I am fortunate to not be in the crosshairs of what is unfolding to anywhere near the degree millions of others are. I have a chance to help others which in turn helps me. It’s my choice; I can be someone who helps others or someone who feels they are a victim. The fact is, I am not a victim of anything or anyone, just the end result of a series of chain reactions. How the reactions continue depend in large part on the choices I make going forward.

I am learning during these conditions, the best thing I can do to help the world is to first be good to myself. Without doing so, I cannot be of help to others. I must invest in my soul; quiet it down. A restless soul is pain and the pain is caused from not being at peace with myself. It all makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. Anything worthwhile to accomplish must involve some sort of struggle. If I am going to let go, I must first know all that needs releasing. That only happens once I truly understand the source of all my pain, physical and emotional. I can’t release what I am not fully aware of.

March 4: Damaged Goods

Last night, after my usual midnight trip to the bathroom, I was unable to fall back to sleep, becoming consumed with the thought that perhaps I was just born as damaged goods. It’s one thing to see how I may be hardwired for depression which sets forth all that can come with it. But that was not what kept me from falling back to sleep. I began considering all the ways I am damaged by trying to link the things that have happened to me, big and small, that my siblings have not had to deal with.

I was the sixth kid my mom gave birth to so you would figure by then she knew what she was doing with the basics of baby raising. However, I failed to put on the weight that was normal early on. The reason was pretty simple. My mom messed up on the formula she fed me. I was only receiving half the strength the others received for the first month of my life. On top of this, after I was born, my mom claimed she never wanted my dad’s mother to be left alone to hold any baby because when I was two weeks old, grandma dropped me on my head — the first of many head injuries.

Mom always said I was the easiest of her babies because for hours I would sit by myself in a playpen and never cry or ask for attention. Through therapy, I learned this is not normal infant behavior. I enjoyed my solitude from the start and still today am not one to seek individual attention. I never maintained a lot of friends. I knew many people, but rarely enjoyed going to any social gathering, whether it was someone’s birthday party or social function. I didn’t even enjoy having my own birthday party and still don’t to this day.

There were other thoughts as well. My first significant injury happened in second grade. Kids are supposed to be made of rubber and bend and twist like Gumby. Our bones have yet to fully set which makes breaking one hard to do. We bounce, scrape, and bleed, but not much more. I rolled my ankle at recess so badly that it swelled to the size of a pineapple. Recess stopped, I was stretchered to the office, and mom came and took me to dad’s medical office. It was my first, but not last, time on crutches.

After that, the ankle was never the same. Each year, I would injure it again. It finally got to the point where as an adult, I could roll that ankle in a horrific manner and the ligaments were so stretched, if I felt any pain it would be a day or two later, but not in the ankle. I would feel the ligament where it inserted at the lower outside part of my knee.

My balance has always been so off that I could fail a field sobriety test stone cold sober. Injuries piled up and I learned whether it was a sprain, gash, lump on the head, or even a broken bone to do all I could to treat it myself. I may have had the desire of an aspiring athlete, but was cursed with the limbs of PeeWee Herman.

I have no idea how many head injuries I have suffered either from playground collisions leaving me with giant goose egg lumps on my forehead to actual concussions. I am sure the countless soccer balls I learned to forward to a teammate via my forehead did not help my brain or neck. By the time I crashed my bike and struck head first into that juniper trunk in 2007, I’d already done more than my share of harm to my noggin.

I can rationalize the injuries suffered in the 2007 accident. However, even without them, I have had so many orthopedic surgeries that when I fill out new patient forms and am asked to list my surgeries, I now write, “Too many to list in the space provided.”

One surgery on my right ankle, right knee, and left knee. Two surgeries on each shoulder and I am in need of a third on my right. Two discs were repaired in my lower spine. On top of these, there was the removal of a cyst below my tailbone in high school. I have a three inch scar on my abdomen and another one that is an inch and a half on my right chest for procedures for two different cancerous growths. Most of these are not the things my siblings have dealt with.

Like my siblings and friends, I spent endless hours playing outside under the summer sun without a shirt or sunscreen. My sisters would cook all summer next to mom poolside. Us boys were pulling weeds, painting the house, or playing ball along with swimming. We all have an appreciation for outdoor life whether I am running or cycling to no end or others are hiking or sitting beachside somewhere. We were all over exposed to the sun’s harm and yet here I am, the only one of the bunch who has been diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. Coincidence or damaged goods?

But damaged goods go beyond physical injuries. I was the only one in the family to repeat a grade in elementary school, something I am thankful for because it allowed me to hit the reset button and begin to slow down my active brain. Still, who wants to be the only one who could not just physically keep up with peers because of his runt sized body, but also struggled to do so in the classroom?

So here I am recalling all of this and wondering if maybe I am just a fool to want to get back to being more active. Perhaps I am wiser to buy a hot tub and spend my days soaking my aches and enjoying a nice cool beverage. Maybe I should just hire out help for yard work. Perhaps I would be happier downsizing into a place without a yard. Then I remind myself, perhaps because I am damaged goods, I understand better than doctors my need to keep moving because it is my drug of choice.

If I ever get stuck into an old folks home, I will be the one old fart asking to be let outside to go for a run just as I was that kid in school needing to run laps. While I enjoy thinking, studying, and discussing matters, I much prefer going to bed each night physically exhausted from work or playing outdoors.

In two hours, I have physical therapy and later TMS. I’d much prefer to blow it off, buy a couple of bottlebrush trees and a few plants and work in the yard. I have watering systems I want to install and weeds to pull. The sky is gray but the air is thick and muggy. Shorts and a t-shirt will suffice on the clothing front and Bug can entertain me chasing the squirrels and birds who have begun to intrude on his domain. It’s a perfect day to be outside and work then fall asleep exhausted.

Tomorrow, I am due to get my skin checked and then TMS. Thursday, more PT and TMS. My week finishes with just TMS before I am free to tackle the yard further. However, I am reminded I am damaged in ways that go beyond my struggle with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. My projects will have to wait a few more days, just far enough ahead for me to have no idea how I will feel physically or mentally, but not so far off that I can’t wait to find out.

Part 3   Part 2   Part 1