falling down...getting up

12:04 AM Monday morning. My eyes are blurry and unfocussed. My hands are shaking and I have to watch my fingers carefully so I can type the correct letters. I can’t stop my leg from bouncing up and down. If I do I don’t think I’ll be able to feel where I am.

It’s been three weeks since the surgery and my left foot is still numb. If I’m not wearing shoes it’s not so bad, but when I do it hurts. Walking is very strange. I use a cane because my right leg is weak and can give out at random moments whenever it feels like it. Combine that with a numb left foot and the constant vertigo and balance becomes a fleeting memory.

I bounce around from thought to thought starving for concentration. Having a conversation with someone is like trying to snatch one solitary voice out of a stadium crammed full of rioting people.

My heart went back out of rhythm two days ago. I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, my eyes refused to stay open. I couldn’t sleep but I wasn’t awake either. Stuck somewhere in between watching the hint of orange light from the window glowing through my eyelids.

When I woke up the next morning the steady beat was back. But none of my strength came with it. I used to be strong. Not linebacker strong, but I could open any jar and throw my kids high in the air into the pool. Now I can barely pull my socks off before going to bed.

It’s a cliché, but I’ve become a shadow of my former self. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up from a bad dream. No such luck. I love to blame all of my health problems on genetic misfortune out of anyone’s control. I have to stop doing that. Now. If I want to get better I need to take responsibility for some of this predicament.

I mean the M.S. was not something that I could predict or prevent, at least as far as the medical profession can tell. Part of my heart problem is probably genetic. My father has a heart murmur and we have family members who died from heart attacks. But I spent years of my life not taking care of myself. I smoked, stopped exercising because I was lazy and ate like a fool for way too long.

Now I need to change that way of being. I need to care enough about myself to take care of myself. Whatever that means. Food, exercise, yoga, and transcendental meditation…I don’t know yet. I’m trying to figure it all out.

I am fortunate to have a great group of people who do care about me though. Being new in this small town has really opened my eyes. The neighbors who live behind us come over every day around lunchtime to check in on me and take Sadie for a walk. People call throughout the day to say hello and make sure I’m still answering the phone.

Last week I went on my first outing from the house since the surgery. We went to a local Holiday Bazaar and Penny Social where I bumped into quite a few people who hugged me and said, “It’s so wonderful to see you up and about.” I can honestly say that I didn’t know who most of them were. But they knew who I was and were sending out positive thoughts for my recovery. Definitely not something I am used to. But it feels really, really nice.

Sometimes it takes the affection of strangers to make you feel like you’re worth something. That’s why being on stage can be so addictive. You can get used to the people who are regularly in your life and take their expressions of love for granted. They blend with the voices in your head and sound the same as your own thoughts. That can be misleading when you lie to yourself all the time like me.

That’s my highest hurdle to leap. Being honest with myself. Not just being good to myself when others are around. Taking care of myself not only with what I put in my body, but with the thoughts I allow in my head. Recognizing that when someone says to me, “I love you”, they actually mean it. They are going out on a limb to express the way they feel. I need to hang with them on that precarious perch, believe what they say and accept that I am worthy of their caring.

Allowing myself to love myself should not be considered as arrogance. It is a necessity for healing. It is the main tool in paving the way for living happily. I don’t mean to say that I should find myself infallible. I will always make mistakes. I will continue to struggle with disappointing myself. The trick I think is to love myself regardless and accept the reality that I am human and can’t always live up to my own expectations. And that should be okay.

So what if I didn’t make the cover of Modern Drummer by the time I was eighteen years old. So what if I didn’t sell millions of records and win a truckload of Grammys. That shouldn’t be the bar by which I judge myself a successful and good person. It’s been that foolish thinking that made me treat myself so badly for so long. I don’t want to do that anymore.

All I know is when I woke up in the hospital and watched my wife sleeping on the couch across the room my main thought was that I never want to put her through this again. She showed me a picture that she took with her cell phone of me lying there looking like a sleeping alien. It seemed like there were a thousand tubes and wires going in and out of my body. As physically difficult as it was, I had the easy part. I got to sleep through most of it. Sure there was physical pain. That dissipates while the scabs and scars eventually heal and fade to tiny pink reminders. The mental wounds stick around. Memories remain fresh much, much longer.

If it means battling the voices in my head that have been repeating the same sick shit for decades I will do it. If it means challenging my instincts and trusting that the love of my family and friends is real I will do it. I will not allow myself to get that close to the edge again if I can help it.

By no means will it be easy. There will be slip-ups and fallbacks. So I will leave reminders for myself around this studio along with all of the other inspirational quotes and images I have posted on the walls. I will read them every day so I don’t forget. And for starters I’ll have a handful of baby carrots and work on re-building my strength. Hopefully In the next week or so when my neighbor comes over to take the dog for a walk I can walk with them.

My wife will probably kick my ass for taking so long to figure this all out. But better late than never I guess. Right?

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