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You Guys Rock

Ok, first of all - thank you guys so much for your comments and support. You make my life easier to deal with and make me feel like I'm less alone. So a big thank you to you all. It always helps to get other people's perspectives on things, too, because I have been known to have a bit of a one track mind!

Not much has happened really, just kicking along, fighting with the public health system, which is very frustrating. Went to have an assessment at the Pain Management Clinic, which was quite depressing, since they told me it is likely that the pain is not going to go away in a hurry. They are very long-term thinkers so medication is not at the top of their lists. Which is fine, I do need to learn to manage it without drugs. However with so many things going on in my life at the moment, on so many different fronts, that it seems almost cruel of the doctors not to prescribe some short-term relief.

Oh, that's the other thing - you know Bea, the cavalier king charles that Deb and Keith have? Well, she's just had pups - 5 of them, very cute (although at the moment they kind of look more like rats than dogs, to be honest). Two of the pups were so big that Bea had to have an emergency caeser (sp?) - $700 later... lucky they are purebred pups! They should be able to recoup the money from selling them. Each pup is worth around $500, so the math works out.

More random writings below...

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I wonder if love, like romantic love as read about in countless novels, actually exists. Relationships, so it seems to me, are formed on the basis of three main factors: physical attraction, emotional rapport, and financial considerations. Which sounds really clinical, and I suppose it is. Maybe people just fall in and out of 'love' as these factors fluctuate and gain different levels of importance over time. Is that what people mean when they say 'love'? A kind of overall committment and recognition of the costs of leaving? Do other people sit and make silent sarcastic comments about their partners and still call that love? Do other people find traits in their partners that drive them up the wall and bite their tongues because the rent is due and the kids are sleeping? Is that what life is? Is that what love is? Accepting flaws and annoyances and betrayals and fights in the name of long-term stability and security? It's so depressing. I think I've read too many books. I feel lied to. Reality is a gyp.

I guess, in balance, that novels are dreams of a perfect world where things make sense and have significance and purpose. Literature shows us remarkably few examples of deep, abiding romantic love. What's the Tolstoy quote? "All happy families resemble each other, but each family is unhappy in its own way" - or something like that. Which is very bleak, and leads me to see why people write romance novels. A sad broken wish, cried out on paper. A utopia, glimpsed, longed for, but unrealisable.

Why did they give me these stories to read? Why was I brought up on "Little Women" and "The Hard Winter" and the Bible, the classical stories and myths of noble people acting in a noble way, sacrificing for ideals and beliefs and a larger purpose? I don't think I've ever come across an example of a real human person who acted in this way. And those I thought were these noble, high-minded individuals turned out to be the worst bastards of the lot.

Scoutmasters raping their scout troops. Camp counsellors raping kids in their dorms at summer camp. Churches led by paedophiles and paedophiles protected by churches. The UN oil-for-food scandal. Parents who neglect, abuse and warp their kids in the name of religion and the Lord. The police, out for a conviction regardless of evidence. Journalists writing exposes, and then being exposed themselves as compromised, fraudulent, or corrupt. On and on and on... ultimately you can't trust anyone, but I'd rather be screwed by an average Joe than a psuedo-saint. From an average Joe, you kind of expect it.

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Posted by phreq at June 18, 2004 11:27 AM | TrackBack