There’s a notion that our secrets only have power over us
when they live in our shadows. Deny them and you empower them. Bring them into
the light and they can fade away. I’ve given thought onto this, and how reluctant I have been to share
with all but a few of you closest friends and associates; usually due to necessity
of given moments. But I don’t want to turn this into anything more than it is;
to give it power it does not deserve. And, if I’m going to move forward in my
own age of personal greatness I need to let go of this crippling anchor.
But, first, a touch of background; my grandmother was nuts.
I guess it needs more than that.
My grandmother believed that a hundred thousand million
things were wrong with her, for which she pestered and pestered until she was
on handfuls of medications. Some she actually needed. Some, even to this day I’m
convinced, she most certainly didn’t. But overall, though I loved her very much,
she was plagued by this issue; her own hypochondria.
This, in itself, isn’t much a thing, no. But at some point,
under her watchful scrutiny, she decided to place this notion squarely onto me.
Growing up I received from her an attention I did not want under the burden of
first born grandson; something both my grandparents pushed on to me, but her more
so than grandpa. It’s actually why we fractured so badly as I got older and
asserted my own oneness against their predeterminations.
At some point my grandmother started to see me as weak; as
sickly. I imagine, since I had some
health issues as a child, that this might
be considered typical. However, despite my best attempts to be a normal little
boy, and later a healthy teenager (To which I was never really either, I
suppose.), she would not only hang tightly to the idea of the helpless Charlie,
but would see it worsen, despite the very opposite to be true.
For me her obsessive behavior about her health, and mine,
would visibly escalate as I got older into something unfortunate, something
compulsive, something sick. In me it fostered a fear of medicine to such a
degree that Aspirin was only reached for if I had a gaping hole from which
blood poured out. It was not the fear of being ill, or even getting older; it
was the fear of being decrepit, as I saw a living corpse consumed by chemicals
and a variety of debilitating hang ups.
This has stayed with me all through the years, especially
after her passing, when there were dozens and dozens of pill bottles worth of
medicine that had to be tossed out. She had a veritable pharmacy in her
cupboard. And through all that time – the first inklings that something was
wrong until her dying day, and beyond – I swore that that would never, ever, be
me.
And then June 1st, 2014. Now my mornings include this ritual…
It’s been hard to have to be shackled to my little silver
tube. I load it up every day with a dose in the morning, and a booster in the
evening; which is only two extra pills. As I jokingly say to those who get to
witness this act; “well, okay; now my heart won’t explode in the next twelve
hours.” It never gets the look I hope for when I say it, though.
The reality is that, no; my heart won’t “explode”. What this
combination of pills does is regulate blood pressure, heart rate, and manage
some of the pain that incurs through the day due to the damage my heart
sustained from the radiation. I’m not dependent on these pills to stay alive,
but if I want to avoid another heart failure - disarm the ticking time bomb in my chest, and live as long and as productively
happy as possible, then I have to take them. I’m sitting on a bit of surgery
that will deal with some of the damage, and even make one of these pills unnecessary,
until I can square away the costs and recovery time. All the while I am
actually making a gradual recovery on my own. Barring any unforeseen medical breakthrough,
of course.
It’s been almost twenty one months – just shy of two years –
and I’m still having trouble coming to terms with my situation. I mean, I know
it’s not THAT bad. For instance, and with no disrespect to friends or my
cousin, I don’t have an insulin pump stuck to my side, for example. And I’m now
able to accomplish feats that most folks with my condition no longer can do
more for than to wish they still could. (Even if it’s still just so much, and
not full throttle.)
And, of course, there’s the whole sense of pride knowing I’m
surviving the after effects of radiation that would have killed most shortly
after initial exposure; which should totally by a thing of pride, I suppose.
And I do, trust me. But when you’ve built a reputation of being the
true-to-life mutant X-man, well, any slowdown is hard to take for the old ego.
I’m trying to learn to accept this, to own it, and to make
it my little bitch. I know it can be beaten, or at least overcome. I’m already
doing it now, to the shock of my cardiologist. But I can’t let this be my
little demon; it can’t have any power over me, especially since it has earned
none. If this is the consequence of deciding twenty five years ago I would not
become a seventeen year old corpse, then so be it. I will own this, it will not
own me.
Rest easy, grandma; your grandson is more powerful than you
had ever imagined.
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