Two and a half years out from surgery, and here are the numbers I care about:
- ???
Some changes need to happen. I’m not counting the weeks out from surgery any more because fuck math, and because even if this was a baby – as opposed to my life – we’d have stopped counting the weeks a long time ago. Also, I haven’t written one of these in a month, and I really need to get back into the habit of writing them, but at the moment, I’m just taking some time to recover from a pretty rough year, and a terrible fall semester.
Some quick perspective: The other night, around 2am, I was in my office playing video games while my dogs snored on the floor next to me, while the rain pounded down on the roof like it had an agenda, while the heater kept me warm, while the excess of (wildly) high-calorie holiday food kept me full, while the best person I know, who loves me fiercely, slept in our bed, and it occurred to me that, planet-wide, there just aren’t very many people as lucky as me. So when I say things like “rough” and “terrible” just…you know, grain of salt.
I’d like my years to stop having body counts.
We lost my father in law on Christmas morning. Much like my father, he was a complicated guy, who could be frustrating, but without question, he loved all of us, and more than anything, he wanted to take care of his entire family. When I married Annette, I became his son, and there was never a day where I doubted his love for me or that I was his family. I haven’t been processing this much because I’m mostly concerned with Annette, who has legit had one of the shittiest weeks of her life, but his passing is starting to sink in, and even though he was pretty absent these last several years, it’s starting to hurt. This is on the heals of losing Julie earlier this fall, my Uncle Rick a little over a month ago, and in the middle of the anniversaries of all the people we lost to Covid last year. I’ve accepted the fact that, as I age, I’ll be losing people regularly, but I’d sure appreciate a drop in numbers.
For those of us who teach English at the community college level, there’s a particular type of class we have to teach. It’s due to a recent change in the law. I’ve been teaching it for a few years now, and without going into great detail, this particular class requires more of me than I’m cut out to give. Coming to that decision has been painful because it feels like a failure. It’s not a failure any more than it would be a failure if a particular class required me to juggle. It’s not a failure any more than it would be if a particular class required me to be a linguist. Thing is though, no one is requiring me to be a linguist, but there does seem to be a sudden need for jugglers. Where I’m at right now, I’m lucky enough to have a lot of work, and (for the moment at least) I can afford to be a little pickier about the classes I take. So, fuck juggling. I can’t do it, and I don’t particularly want to. I’m not a circus nerd. Still feels a little like failure though.
You may have noticed the nonspecific number up at the top. I haven’t weighed in a month. I haven’t been eating too terribly, but I haven’t been eating well. There’s a lot of fucked up holiday food just sitting around (and by the way? fuck off with your store-bought gourmet popcorn, that shit doesn’t say “love,” it says, “die a slow, lingering death,” and that’s a little off the mark for fucking Christmas), and sometime in the last four months, I seem to have evolved a small addiction to chocolate. This has NEVER been a thing in 52 years, but now even cheap shit like Hershey’s is calling to me like a fucking harpy, and DAMN that girl can sing.
I’m seriously dreading what the scale says when I get on it next week. But that’s next week. This week, I’m just doing my best, and I’m unpacking all the shit from the last four months.
Three things I’m grateful for:
- Self awareness.
- Having enough sense to allow myself to shut down.
- My people.
I. Am. Fucking. Tired. And I’m ready for 2022, even though there’s zero objective evidence that it’ll be anything other than the third annual 2020. The beautiful thing about hope though, is that it requires zero evidence. Here’s hoping for a better year ahead.
No weight loss graphic this week, but here’s a picture of me and two of my favorite people taken about 28 hours after I got my grades turned in. I was exhausted, but that’s a genuine smile of relief:
