Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Alright


Fuck 2016. Many of my friends are saying that. I've said it myself many times this year. I mean, Prince died this year. 2016 has sucked for me and many of my friends who have had to deal with personal loss and challenges.
This is the year I found out I had glaucoma, and it has been a hell of an adjustment. I had laser surgeries on both of my eyes to relieve the eye pressure and I now take three types of eye drops -- two in the morning, one in the afternoon and three in the early evening.
I have a glaucoma specialist and a retina specialist. For weeks, I had the not-so irrational fear that I had a retinal detachment. I kept worrying that all these eye drops I was taking and the laser surgery would not work and I would go blind and lose my independence.
I tried to stay positive and sometimes it worked. Sometimes, it didn't and I'd find myself burrowing down the rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios and what-ifs. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking that I saw flashes, a symptom of retinal detachment. I would make an appointment to check it out and discover that nothing was wrong.
That reassurance wouldn't reassure me. I would go right back to worrying, right back to thinking that something horrible would happen. I sought out help. I joined an online support group for people who have eye diseases like glaucoma. I held on to my faith.
What people don't tell you is that staying positive and having faith is not easy. It's like pushing a boulder up a mountain, your muscles buckling against the pressure and your legs are about to give out. It's like running an 800-meter race, like I did in high school, and finding that second lap is akin to running into a wall. Your lungs are screaming at you and you feel as if you'll faint. You want so much to just stop right then and there. Just fall down and sleep. It would be so much easier.
The hardest part of dealing with a chronic illness is knowing that it's not going anywhere. All you can do is manage it and make sure that the disease doesn't do further damage to your eyes. That's where the laser surgery and the eye drops come in. I have to take those eye drops no matter what. I have to keep up with my medication and get refills when I need them. Not taking my eye drops is not an option.
Fear, in part, drives me. I don't want to go blind. I don't want to lose my independence. I don't want to stop driving. What I do for a living -- writing and reporting -- requires my ability to observe the world around me in detail, the kind of details most people don't notice. I'm always watching the way bodies move through the world, how some seem to float and others stumble. How time tightens in some places and loosens in others. How hips that once shook with vigor now creak when bending.
The world is beautiful, even when it's ugly and I want to see it for as long as I can, and I'm afraid that one day I won't.
To lose your ability to move in the world the way you want to is even scarier, to me, than death.
I think these days about my own fears and the fears I and others have since Nov. 8 happened. The campaign and election  of a man I won't name here has ushered in a long-buried hate that has found a new boldness, and I see dark days ahead. It's scary, just as much as what I've been dealing with is scary to me.
It's scary because so much is uncertain. I don't know what the future holds. I just don't. Movies have happy endings, but that's not a guarantee in life. People die alone. Some people never overcome their addictions. Good men and women are murdered every day for no reason at all, and their loved ones are left to wonder why.
It feels these days as if the assholes have won.
But I know that tomorrow, I will take my eye drops. I will close my eyes for a few minutes, as if in prayer, as I let each drop soak in before I put the next drop in. And I will do it again and again because I have to.
Fear drives me, but I am trying to hold the fear at bay. I am trying to remember that I cannot be paralyzed by fear. Because if that happens, I become blind to those moments of bliss that fill my life, the friends and family I have, the job I cherish, the music I listen to and dance to. I forget to see everything else that is around me that is good.
It's not all right but it is. Fuck 2016 but 2016 taught me grand lessons on what it means to be human. That not every day feels good but me being alive is good.
2016 is a piece of a large puzzle that we haven't seen yet. I can't judge my life based on one year or even five. I never know what good is coming around the corner.
Or bad. The only thing I can do is concentrate on what I have right in front of me, and it looks pretty damn good.