Dispatches From Hellpeckersville-It Doesn’t Work That Way

New year,new me! Um…no. You tell yourself all kinds of things. Things like: I’m going to shake off that gloom and start fresh, but life ain’t like that. Life does not care that you hung a new calendar, that you made a damn list, or decided anything was going to be different. It just goes along being life as you experience it, and that’s not always gonna be the shiny new thing you wanted it to be come January first. Well…shit.

There are things to be happy about, blessings I can count, and I do–over and over, like a mantra, I hold onto to keep me from falling. I had to put my art aside for two weeks for the holidays, and that didn’t help, but as of last night I’m working again. Trying to push through this, and I tell myself to just do a little more, just do something, don’t give in to it, that thing, that thing that tells you it doesn’t matter. Why, why when dozens of people tell you it’s good, keep going, do you listen to that liar in your head saying, “Pfft, yeah, right.” I can’t. I can’t do that this time. So, I’m working, slowly, and full of doubt, but working, and telling that thing to STFU, I’m doing this.

I spent time with my boys over the break, and we had fun, as usual, but they’re getting to the age now where they’re humoring me more than anything. That realization comes home to every parent eventually, but this year? Bad timing to pull that plank out of the shaky Jenga tower of my emotional well-being, Karma, you bitch. Get over here, kids, time for fun with Mom: you will participate, and you will enjoy it! Ugh! They did enjoy it, but I’m losing them. They gave me about an hour. That’s normal, but it sucks.

I’m still having very good pain control on my good days, when the botox works. It just feels so much worse when it doesn’t. And I have to say that this past Sunday and Monday I really wanted to cut my damn head off. I had planned to reorganize my supply table and maybe pull prints Sunday night, but no. By Monday morning Cleetus was asking me if I wanted to go to the ER. Nah, if you’re taking me to the ER I’d better be bleeding or gray. Look, just because you see me with my head sideways down on the table with a fistful of hair in either hand, that means nothing. Nothing, I tell you! Usually I make it to the bed before it gets to that. They don’t hit like that all that often, that’s a different style of headache–a suicide cluster style, and there isn’t anything you can do until they pass.

Today, as I write, I would put my pain level at very low, maybe a two and I may have a good day. But I do need to be aware, and take a tramadol if I notice it start to creep and I may stay low all day long, and that’s all I want, I can work, I can function. Or it could flare past that and I could be fighting with it to the point where I’ll be taking two more tramadol today, and maybe tomorrow I’ll be okay, or I’ll be taking fiorocet. I really lose a lot less full days now. More than I would like, but less than I used to. So, I can tell myself, look at how much better you’re doing, isn’t that great? Yep, yeah it is.

So why am I struggling? Because that’s how life is? I don’t know. If I knew the answer I could bottle that shit and sell it. All I know to do is hang on and try to work my way through. I’ve done the therapy route, I do the anti-depressants. I write it all out for your reading pleasure. Everybody has hard years. We all go through horrendous stuff and feel shitty. Except that Tweeter hang-up dude, he’s over 72 and he feels great.